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WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 



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BY 



BARRETT WENDELL 



ASSISTANT PROF 



OF ENGLISH AT HARVARD COLLEGE 



28 i«94- 






NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1894 






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Copyright, 1894, 
By Charles Scribner's Sons. 



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John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



NOTE 

As this book has grown from lectures given, at 
Harvard College, to classes who were systematically 
reading the works under discussion, it has been im- 
possible to avoid the assumption that a text of Shaks- 
pere is always close at hand. 

Whoever is familiar with the subject must instantly 
perceive my constant obligation to the writings of 
Mr. Dowden and Mr. Furnivall. Just as helpful, 
though not obvious to the public, have been the manu- 
script notes on Shakspere kindly lent me by Messrs. 
Charles Lowell Young and Henry Copley Greene, of 
Harvard University ; and by Miss M. T. Bennett, of 
Radcliffe College. The proof-sheets of an admirable 
essay on John Lyly by my colleague, Mr. George 
Pierce Baker, unhappily failed to reach me until after 
this book was printed. 

B. W. 

New Castle, N. H., 

23 August, 1894. 



CONTENTS 



Chapter Page 

I. Introduction 1 

II. The Facts of Shakspere's Life 7 

III. Literature and the Theatre in England 

until 1587 23 

IV. The Works of Shakspere 48 

V. Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of 

Lucrece 51 

VI. The Plays of Shakspere, from Titus An- 
dronicus to the two gentlemen of 

Verona 66 

VII. The Plays of Shakspere, from A Mid- 
summer Night's Dream to Twelfth 

Night .103 

VIII. Shakspere's Sonnets 221 

IX. The Plays of Shakspere, from Julius 

Cesar to Coriolanus . 238 

X. Timon of Athens, and Pericles, Prince 

of Tyre 345 

XL The Plays of Shakspere, from Cymbeline 

to Henry VIII 355 

XII. William Shakspere 395 

Authorities, etc 427 

Index 429 



WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 



INTRODUCTION" 

The purpose of this study is to present a coherent 
view of the generally accepted facts concerning the 
life and the work of Shakspere. Its object, the 
common one of serious criticism, is so to increase 
our sympathetic knowledge of what we study that we 
may enjoy it with fresh intelligence and appreciation. 
The means by which we shall strive for this end will 
be a constant effort to see Shakspere, so far as is 
possible at this distance of time, as he saw himself. 

Of one thing we may be certain. To himself Shaks- 
pere was a very different fact from what he now seems 
to the English-speaking world. To people of our time 
he generally presents himself as an isolated, supreme 
genius. To people of his own time — and he was a 
man of his own time himself — he was certainly no- 
thing of the kind ; he was no divine prophet, no 
superhuman seer, whose utterances should edify and 
guide posterity ; he was only one of a considerable 
company of hard-working playwrights, whose work 
at the moment seemed neither more nor less serious 
l 



2 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

than that of any other school of theatrical writers. 
Nothing but the lapse of time could have demonstrated 
two or three facts now so commonplace that we are 
apt to forget they were not always obvious. 

First of all, the school of literature in which his 
work belongs — the Elizabethan drama — proves to 
have been one of the most completely typical phe- 
nomena in the whole history of the fine arts. It took 
little more than half a century to emerge from an 
archaic tradition, to develop into great imaginative 
vitality, and to decline into a formal tradition, no 
longer archaic, but if possible less vital than the tra- 
dition from which it emerged. In this typical liter- 
ary evolution, again, Shakspere's historical position 
happens to have been almost exactly central ; some 
of his work belongs to the earlier period of the 
Elizabethan drama, much of it to the most intensely 
vital, some of it to the decline. This fact alone — 
that in a remarkably typical school of art he is the 
most comprehensively typical figure — would make 
him worth serious attention. The third common- 
place invisible to his contemporaries, however, is 
so much more important than either of the others 
that nowadays it obscures them, and indeed ob- 
scures the whole subject. This most typical writer 
of our most broadly typical literary school happened 
to be an artist of first-rate genius. Canting as such a 
phrase must sound, it has something like a precise 
meaning. In the fine arts, the man of genius is he 
who in perception and in expression alike, in thought 



INTRODUCTION" 3 

and in phrase, instinctively so docs his work that 
his work remains significant after the conditions 
which actually produced it are past. Throughout 
the Elizabethan drama there were flashes of genius ; 
in general, however, the work of the Elizabethan 
dramatists was so adapted to the conditions of the 
Elizabethan stage that, after the lapse of three cen- 
turies, its flashes of genius have faded into the ob- 
scurity of book-shelves, where they serve now chiefly 
to lighten the drudgery of men who study the history 
of literature. In the case of Shakspcre, the genius 
was so strong and permeating that his work, from 
beginning to end, has survived every vestige of the 
conditions for which it was made. We are apt now 
to forget that it was made for any other conditions 
than those amid which, generation by generation, we 
find it, 

If we would sincerely try to see the man as he saw 
himself, we must resolutely put aside these common- 
places of posterity. In their stead we must substi- 
tute the normal commonplaces of human experience. 
Shakspere, we know, was an Elizabethan playwright ; 
and we know enough of the Elizabethan drama to 
form, in the end, a pretty clear conception of the pro- 
fessional task which was thus constantly before him. 
By both temperament and profession, too, Shakspere 
was a creative artist ; and those of us who have had 
much to do with people who try to create works of 
art learn to know that in general the artistic temper- 
ament, great or small, develops according to pretty 



4 WILLIAM SHAKSPEKE 

well fixed principles. Our effort to understand Shaks- 
pere, then, begins to define itself. We shall have done 
much if we can learn to see in him a man of normal 
artistic temperament, developing, in spite of its scale, 
in a normal way, under the known conditions which 
surrounded the Elizabethan theatre. 

Such definite study of him as this has been possible 
only in recent years. Until rather lateby one obstacle 
to it was insurmountable. To study the development 
of any artist, we must know something of the order in 
which "his works were produced ; and Shakspere's 
works have generally been presented to us in great 
chronological confusion. The first collection of his 
plays, a very carelessly printed folio, appeared in 
1623. Here they were roughly classified as come- 
dies, histories, and tragedies ; under these heads, 
too, they were arranged in no sort of order. The 
book opens with the Tempest, for example, which is 
followed by the Two Gentlemen of Verona; yet nothing 
is now much better proved than that the Two Gentle- 
men of Verona is the earlier by above fifteen years. 
Again, the plays dealing with English history are 
printed in the order in which the sovereigns they deal 
with ascended the throne of England ; yet, if we except 
Henry VIII. , which stands by itself, nothing is more 
certain than that Henry VI. is chronologically the 
first of the series, and Henry V. the last, with an in- 
terval of at least nine years between them. The 
general arrangement of the plays in the first folio, 
fairly exemplified by these instances, is still followed 



INTRODUCTION 5 

in standard editions of Shakspere. The resulting con- 
fusion of impression is almost ultimate. 

During the past century or so, however, scholarship 
has gone far to reduce this chaos to order. On various 
grounds, a plausible chronology has arisen. Sixteen 
of the plays, and all of the poems, were published in 
quarto during Shakspere's lifetime. Entries in the 
Stationers' Register — analogous to modern copyright 
— exist in many cases. Allusions in the works of con- 
temporary writers are sometimes helpful ; so are allu- 
sions to contemporary matters in the plays themselves. 
More subtle, less certain, but surprisingly suggestive 
chronological evidence has been collected by elaborate 
analysis of technical style. It has been discovered, for 
example, that end-stopped verse, and rhyme are far 
more frequent in Shakspere's earlier work than in his 
later, and that what are called light and weak endings 
to verses occur in constantly increasing proportion 
during the last six or eight years of his writing. The 
plays have been grouped accordingly. 1 By some 
means or other, then, and in almost every case by 
means foreign to the actual substance of the works 
in question, foreign to the matters they deal with or 
to the mood in which they deal with them, a conjec- 
tural date — as a rule provisionally accepted by 
scholars — has been assigned to every work com- 
monly ascribed to Shakspere. 

Reading the plays and the poems in this conjecturally 

1 An adequate discussion of this matter is accessible to everybody 
in Dowden's Primer of Shakspere, pp. 32-46. 



6 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

chronological order we find in them something far re- 
moved from the pristine confusion of the standard 
editions. Once for all, of coarse, we must admit to 
ourselves that what results we thus find are not in- 
contestable. As our chronology is only conjectural, 
so must be any inferences which we may draw from 
it. If these inferences be plausible, however, if they 
help us to find in Shakspere not only the supreme 
genius of English literature, but also a normal hu- 
man being, greater than others, but not different in 
kind, we are fairly warranted in accepting them as 
a matter of faith. At least we may believe, though 
we may never assert, that they can help us in our effort 
to see Shakspere as he saw himself ; and so to under- 
stand, to appreciate, to enjoy him better than before. 
Our purpose, then, is to obtain a coherent view of the 
generally accepted facts concerning the life and the 
work of Shakspere. To accomplish this, we may best 
begin by glancing at the known facts of Shakspere's 
life. Then we shall briefly consider the condition of 
English literature at the time when his literary ac- 
tivity began. Then we shall consider in chronological 
order, and with what detail proves possible, all the 
works commonly assigned to him. Finally, we shall 
endeavor to define the resulting impression of his 
individuality. 



II 

THE FACTS OF SHAKSPERE'S LIFE 

v [All the known documents concerning Shakspere are collected in 
Mr. Halliwell-Phillips's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare. In Mr. F. G. 
Fleay's Life anil Work of Shakespeare is a masterly discussion of them. 
Dowdeu's Primer, and Furnivall's Introduction to the Leopold Shaks- 
pere state the facts more compactly. In none of the authorities is it 
always easy to separate facts from inferences. If Wilder's Life, Boston, 
1893, were a bit more careful in detail, it would be perhaps the most 
satisfactory, because the least complicated with conjecture.] 

Ox April 26th, 1564, William, son of John Shaks- 
pere, was baptized at Stratford-on-Avon. John Shaks- 
pere, the father, had come from the neighboring 
country to Stratford, where he was engaged in fairly 
prosperous trade. In 1557 he had married Mary 
Arden, a woman of social position somewhat better 
than his own. In 1568 he was High Bailiff, or 
Mayor of Stratford. Until 1577, indeed, the extant 
records indicate that he was constantly looking up 
in the world. In that year, they begin to indicate 
that his circumstances were declining; in 1578 they 
show that he had to put a mortgage for ,£40 on an 
estate called Asbies. Meanwhile he had become the 
father of five other children, 1 of whom four survived. 

1 Gilbert, b. 1566; Joan, b. 1569; Anne, b. 1571, d. 1579; Richard, 
b. 1573; Edmund, b. 1580. Two older daughters had died in infancy. 



8 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Of William Shakspere's youth, then, we may be 
sure that it began in a well-to-do family of Stratford, 
increasing in numbers and prosperity ; and that when 
he was about thirteen years old the prosperity came 
to an end. 

On November 28th, 1582, when he was half-way 
between eighteen and nineteen years old, comes the 
first record which directly concerns him. A bond 
was given for his marriage to Anne Hathaway, a 
woman then in her twenty-sixth year, and of social 
position in no way better than Shakspere's. On May 
26th, 1583, their first child, Susanna, was baptized. 
What inferences may be drawn from these dates have 
given rise to much discussion. In all probability they 
indicate a practice still common among respectable 
country folk, in America sometimes called " keep- 
ing company ; " and are interesting chiefly as they 
throw light on the manners to which Shakspere was 
born. On February 2nd, 1585, his twin children, 
Hamnet and Judith, were baptized. In 1587, there 
is a record of his sanction, at Stratford, to a proposed 
arrangement concerning the Asbies mortgage which 
his father, who Avas now in prison for debt, had exe- 
cuted in 1578. This is literally all that is known of 
his early life at Stratford. Stories of how he Avent to 
school, how he saw plays, how he was at Kenilworth 
when Queen Elizabeth came there in 1575, how he was 
apprenticed to a local butcher, how he poached in Sir 
Thomas Lucy's park, have no authority. They are 
not impossible ; there is nothing to prove them. 



SETAKSPERE'S LIFE 9 

From the actual facts, however, certain inferences 
may be drawn. At the age of twenty-three, he was 
the eldest of the five surviving children of a ruined 
country tradesman ; he was married to a woman 
already about thirty, who had borne him three chil- 
dren ; and he had no recorded means of support. 

Five years later comes the next reference to him. 
On September 3d, 1592, Robert Greene, the dramatist, 
died. His last book, Green's Giroatsivorth of Wit ; 
bought with a Million of Repentaunce, speaks rather 
scurrilously of the theatres where he had rioted away 
his life. In the course of it occurs this passage : 

" Base minded men al three of you, if by my miserie 
ye be not warned: for unto none of you (like me) sought 
those burres to cleave: those Puppits (I meane) that 
speake from our mouths, those Anticks garnisht in our 
colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they al have 
beene beholding: is it not like that you, to whome they all 
have beene beholding, shall (were ye in that case that I am 
now) be both at once of them forsaken? Yes, trust them 
not : for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our 
feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players 
hide, 1 supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke 
verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes 
fac totum, is in his oune conceit the onely Shake-scene in 
a countrie. that I might intreate your rare wits to be 
imployed in more profitable courses: & let these Apes 
imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint 
them with your admired inventions. ... It is pittie 

1 Cf. 3 Henry VI. Act I. Scene iv. 137. 



10 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

men of such rare wits, should be subject to the pleasures 
of such rude groomes. . . . For other new commers, I 
leave them to the mercie of these painted monsters, who 
(I doubt not) will drive the best minded to despise them; 
for the rest its skils not though they make a jeast at 
them." * 

From this passage, we may clearly infer that by 
the middle of 1592, Shakspere was a recognized 
writer of plays in London, that he was more or less 
involved in the theatrical squabbles of the time, that 
The Third Part of King Henry VI. was in existence, 
and that — at least to the mind of Robert Greene — 
he had plagiarized. 

Within the year, Henry Chettle, the publisher of 
this posthumous diatribe of Greene's, published an 
apology for it, in the course of which he writes 
thus : — 

"With neither of them that did take offence was I 
acquainted, and with one of them I care not if I never be : 
The other, ... at that time I did not so much spare, as 
since I wish I had, . . . because my selfe have seen his 
demeanor no lesse civill than he exelent in the qualitie he 
professes : Besides, clivers of worship have reported his 
uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his 
facetious grace in writing, that aprooves his Art." 2 

It has been generally inferred that the two persons 

1 Shakspere's Centurie of Prayse. Second Edition, London. New 
Shakspere Society, 1879, p. 2. 

2 Centurie of Prayse, p. 4. 



SHAKSPERE'S LIFE 11 

thus alluded to are the graceless Marlowe and the 
excellent Shakspere. 

On April 18th, 1593, about a week before his twenty- 
ninth birthday, Venus and Adonis, his first published 
work, 1 was entered in the Stationers' Register. During 
the same year it was published in quarto, with Shaks- 
pere's name, by one Field, who was Stratford-born. It 
proved highly popular ; there were eleven quarto edi- 
tions before 1630, and more than twenty allusions to 
it during Shakspere's life-time have been discovered. 

On February 6th, 1594, A noble Roman history 
of Ti/tus Andronicus was entered in the Stationers' 
Register, with no mention of Shakspere's name ; it was 
published, thus anonymously, in 1600. On May 9th, 
1594, the Rape of Lucrece was entered ; and it was 
published within the year. From the terms of the 
dedication, compared with those in the dedication of 
Venus and Adonis? it has been inferred that Shaks- 
pere had meanwhile become personally known to his 
patron, the Earl of Southampton. The poem, though 
popular, was less so than Venus and Adonis ; there 
were six quartos before 1624. 

At Christmas time, 1594, the " servauntes to the 
Lord Chamberlayne " acted twice at court ; and Shaks- 
pere is mentioned as one of the members to whom 
payment for these performances was made. Mr. 
Fleay 3 shows reason to believe that he had belonged 

1 And is not this the whole meaning of the much-discussed phrase 
in the dedication, " the first heir of my invention " '? 

2 See p. 51. 3 Life, pp. 8, 94. 



12 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

to this company, under various patrons, since 1587, 
in which case he must have acted at court before ; 
but this is the first distinct mention of his name. At 
Christmas-tide, 1594, " A comedy of Errors (like 
unto Plautus his Menoechmi ") was played at Gray's 
Inn. Clearly, by this time Shakspere was established 
in his profession. Just how he became so there is no 
record ; the tales of his holding horses at the theatre- 
door, and so on, rest on no valid authority. 

So far, then, the records show Shakspere first as 
a probably imprudent and needy youth, saddled with a 
family at twenty -three ; and secondly, at thirty, as 
a fairly established theatrical man in London. In 
view of these facts, the next records l are significant. 
A conveyance of land at Stratford, dated January 
26th, 1596, describes John Shakspere, the father, 
as " yeoman." In the Heralds' College, a draft grant 
of arms to this same John Shakspere, dated October 
20th, 1596, describes him as a " gentleman." From 
the fact that this implied return of prosperity to the 
family has no other apparent source than the growing 
prosperity of the dramatist, it has been inferred that, 
like any other normal Englishman, Shakspere wished 
to inherit arms and to found a family. If so, another 
record, of the same year, is doubly pathetic ; on August 
11th, his only son, Hamnet, was buried at Stratford, 
in the twelfth year of his age. 

The record of Shakspere's material prosperity, how- 
ever, continues. In Easter Term, 1597, he bought 

1 Leopold Shakspere, p. ciii. 



SHAKSPERE'S LIFE 13 

New Place, a mansion and grounds in Stratford, for 
.£60; thereby becoming a landed proprietor. During 
the same year appeared the first quarto editions of his 
plays : namely, Romeo and Juliet in a very imperfect 
state and probably pirated, Richard II., and Richard 
III. ; his name, however, did not appear on any of 
the titlepages. Another indication of prosperity is 
that in November his father filed a bill in Chancery to 
recover the Asbies estate which he had mortgaged nine- 
teen years before. At Christmas time Love's Labour 's 
Lost was played before the Queen at Whitehall. 

In 1598 this play was published, with Shakspere , s 
name ; so was the First Part of Henry IV. ; so were 
fresh quartos of Richard II. and Richard III. ; and 
the Merchant of Venice was both entered in the 
Stationers' Register and published. 

In this year, too, a fragment of old correspondence 
gives us a glimpse of Shakspere. On the 2-lth of Jan- 
uary one Abraham Sturley, a Stratford man, wrote to 
his kinsman Richard Quiney, who had gone to London 
on business, as follows : — 

"Our countriman, Mr Shaksper, is willinge to disburse 
some monie upon some od yarde land or other at Sliotterie 
. . . (Ur father) thinketh it a veri fitt patterne to move 
him to deale in the matter of our tithes. Bi the instruc- 
cion a can give him thearof, and bi the frends he can 
make therefore, we thinke it a fair marke for him to shoote 
att, and not unpossible to hitt." 

Eight months later, on the 25th of October, Quiney 
wrote thus : — 



14 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

" To my loveinge good ffrend & countreymann Mr. Wrn. 
Shackspere. ... I am bolde of you as of a ffrende, crave- 
inge yowr helpe with xxx li uppon Mr. Bushells and my 
securytee, or Mr. Myttons with me. . . . Yow shall 
ffrende me much in helping me out of all the debettes 
I owe in London, I than eke God, and much quiet my 
mynde, which wolde not be indebeted." 

Some word of this letter seems to have been sent to 
Sturley, for on the 4th of November, Sturley wrote to 
Quiney, acknowledging 

"ur letter of the 25 of October . . . which imported 
that our countriman Mr. Wm, Shak. would procure us 
monie, which I will like of as I shall heare when and 
wheare and howe; and I prai let not go that occasion if 
it mai sort to our indifferent condicions." 

Later still, Richard Quiney's father wrote his son 
on the subject in person, perhaps a shade less 
confidently : — 

" Yff yow bargen with Wm. Sha. ... or receve money | 
therefor, bring youre money homme that yow may." 

Whatever these transactions were, Shakspere seems 
by this time to have presented himself to his fellow- 
townsmen at Stratford as a well-to-do man, and possi- 
bly a useful friend at court. 

In 1598, furthermore, Shakspere acted in Ben Jon- 
son's Every Man in Ms Humour. But the most 
notable fact of the year for us is the publication of 
Francis Meres's Palladis Tamia. 1 In this book, which 

1 Or Wit's Treasury. 



SHAKSPERE'S LIFE 15 

was entered in the Stationers' Register on September 
7th. Shakspere is mentioned at least six times 1 as 
among the best of English authors. The most cele- 
brated and familiar of these passages is the following, 
so obviously helpful in fixing the chronology of Shaks- 
pere's plays : — 

"As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in 
Pythagoras: so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives 
in mellifluous & hony-tongued Shakespeare, witnes his 
Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among 
his private friends, &c. 

"As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for 
Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines ? so Shakespeare 
among y e Euglish is the most excellent in both kinds for 
the stage; for Comedy, witnes his Getleme of Verona, his 
Errors, his Love labors lost, his Love labours wonne, his 
Midsummers night dreame, & his Merchant of Venice : 
for Tragedy his Richard the 2. Richard the 3. Henry 
the If.. King John, Titus Andronicits and his Romeo and 
Juliet. 

"As Epius Stolo said, that the Muses would speake 
with Plautus tongue, if they would speak Latin : so I say 
that the Muses would speak with Shakespeares fine filed 
phrase, if they would speake English." 

At thirty-four, then, Shakspere had pretty clearly 
established himself as a poet, as a dramatist, and as 
an actor ; and, in the opinion of Stratford people, as 
a well-to-do, influential man of business and land- 
holder. 

1 Centurie of Prayse, 21-23. 



16 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

In these characters the records maintain him with 
little change for above ten years to come. In 1599 
two of his Sonnets, and three poems from Love's La- 
bour 's Lost, appeared in a volume called the Passionate 
Pilgrim, ascribed at the time to him, but otherwise 
probably spurious. In 1609 appeared the quarto of 
the So?mets as we have them. 

To pass from poems to plays, in 1599 appeared a 
fairly complete quarto of Romeo and Juliet. In 1600, 
As You Like It, Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, 
the Second Part of Henry IV., the Midsummer 
Night's Dream, and the Merchant of Venice were en- 
tered in the Stationers' Register, and all of these 
except As You Like It were published in quarto, — 
Henry V. without his name ; in the same year appeared 
anonymously the first extant quarto of Titus Andro- 
nicus. In 1602, Tivelfth Night was acted ; the Merry 
Wives of Windsor was entered and published ; and in 
the same year were entered the First and Second Parts 
of Henry VI. and the Revenge of Hamlet. This is 
believed to be the version which appeared in quarto 
in 1603 ; the full text of Hamlet appeared in 1604. 
In 1607 King Lear was entered " as yt was played 
before the Kinges Majestie at Whitehall uppon St 
Stephens night at Christmas last." In the following 
year it appeared in two separate quartos, on the title- 
pages of which Shakspere's name is printed with very 
marked conspicuousness. In 1608, too, Pericles and 
Anthony $ Cleopatra were entered. In 1609 Troylus 
3? Gressida was entered and twice published ; and 



SHAKSPERE'S LIFE 17 

Pericles, too, twice appeared in quarto. This was the 
year, we may remember, in which the Sonnets ap- 
peared. From this time on, although a number of 
the foregoing plays were reprinted during his lifetime, 
no new work of his is known to have been either 
entered orprinted until alter his death; and the only 
one which appeared before the folio of 1623 was 
Othello, entered in 1621, and published in 1622. From 
these facts it would appear that his popularity as a 
dramatist was at its height in 1600 ; and that at least 
his activity diminished after 1609. 

To pass from his works to his acting, he became, in 
1599, a partner in the Globe Theatre, then just erected ; 
and iiis company performed at court during Christmas- 
tide, in 1599, 1600, and 1602. It has been inferred by 
Mr. Fleay 1 that their absence from court in 1601 was 
connected with Essex's rebellion. It is possible that the 
play concerning Richard II., performed on the eve of 
that insurrection, was Shakspere's ; if so, the Queen 
probably had reason to withhold her favor from him 
and his associates ; but the matter is all conjectural. 
Queen Elizabeth died on March 24th, 1603. On May 
19th, King James granted a license to Shakspere and 
others by name, to perform plays and to be called the 
King's Players. The company in question gave sev- 
eral plays at court each year until 1609 ; and in 1604, 
on the occasion of the King's entry into London, 
Shakspere, along with the other players, was granted 
four yards and a half of red cloth. During the years 

1 Life, 143-144. 
2 



18 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

in question, then, he was professionally at the height 
of his prosperity. 

The records of his private affairs maintain this 
conclusion. In 1600 he brought an action for £1 
against a certain John Clayton, and won it ; in 1602 
he bought one hundred and seven acres of land near 
Stratford, as well as other real property in the town •, in 
1604 there came another small action, and some large 
and small purchases of land. The records, in short, 
show him constantly and punctiliously thrifty ; and as 
early as the purchase of 1602 he was legally described 
as " Win. Shakespere of Stratford-uppon-Avon, gen- 
tleman." This description occurs a few months after 
he became the head of his family ; for on September 
8th, 1601, the year of the Essex conspiracy, his father 
was buried. In 1605, his fellow-player, Augustine 
Phillips, bequeathed him "a thirty-shilling piece in 
gold." On June 25th, 1607, Shakspere's elder daugh- 
ter, Susanna, then twenty-four years old, was married 
to Dr. John Hall, a physician of Stratford; on Feb- 
ruary 21st, 1608, Elizabeth Hall, his grandchild, was 
baptized. Two months before, his youngest brother, 
Edmund, " a player," had died in London, and had 
been buried in S. Saviour's, Southwark. On Septem- 
ber 9th, 1608, Shakspere's mother was buried at 
Stratford; on October 16th, he stood godfather there 
to one William Walker. These dry facts tell us 
something. Throughout the period of his professional 
prosperity he was demonstrably strengthening his 
position as a local personage at Stratford ; and the 



SHAKSPERE'S LIFE 19 

chances seem to be that he came thither in person 
more and more. 

From this time on, what records touch him person- 
ally show him chiefly at Stratford. In 1611, to be 
sure, the surprisingly detailed note-book of Dr. Simon 
Forman mentions performances of MachetJi, Cymheline, 
and the Winter s Tale. In 1613, along with some 
older plays, the Tempest was performed at court : in 
the same year, when the Globe Theatre was burned, 
the fire started from a discharge of cannon in a play 
about Henry VIIL, which may have been Shakspere's ; 
and certainly in the same year he bought, and mort- 
gaged, and leased, a house and shop in Blackfriars, 
London. What attracts one's attention more, however, 
is his presence in the country. In 1610 he bought 
more land from the Combes ; in 1611 he subscribed to 
a fund for prosecuting in Parliament a bill for good 
roads ; in 1612, described as " William Shackspeare, 
of Stratford-uppon-Avon, . , gentleman," he joined in 
a suit of which the object was to diminish his taxes ; 
in 1614 he received a legacy of £5 from his Strat- 
ford neighbor, John Combe ; in 1614, too, he was 
deep in a local controversy about the fencing of com- 
mons. Meanwhile there is said to be no record 
directly connecting him with theatrical life after 1609, 
when his publication ceased. 

In view of this, the last paragraph of the Dedica- 
tion of John Webster's White Devil l is in a way 
significant : — 

1 Centime of Pray se, 100. 



20 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

" Detraction is the sworne friend to ignorance: For 
mine owne part I have ever truly cherisht my good opinion 
of other mens worthy Labours, especially of that full and 
haightned stile of maister Chapman : The lahor'd and 
understanding workes of maister Johnson : The no lesse 
worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Maister 
Beaumont & Maister Fletcher: And lastly (without 
wrong last to he named) the right happy and copious in- 
dustry of M. Shakespeare, M. Decker, & M. Heywoocl, 
wishing what I write may he read by their light: Pro- 
testing, that, in the strength of mine owne judgement, I 
know them so worthy, that though I rest silent in my 
owne worke, yet to most of theirs I dare (without flattery) 
fix that of Martiall. 

— non norunt, Htec monumenta mori." 

This was written in 1612. The first play of Chap- 
man was published in 1598 ; the first of Heywood, in 
1599 ; the first of Jonson and the first of Dekker 
in 1600; the first of Beaumont and Fletcher in 
1607. Webster, probably a greater man than any 
of these, speaks of them all, in his first words, 
as traditional models. He groups Shakspere with 
them ; and Shakspere had certainly begun his work, 
as a rival of Greene and Peele and Marlowe, years be- 
fore any of these others except perhaps Dekker. In 
1612 he was already, in a way, a tradition. 

What little more is recorded of him belongs to 
the year 1616. On January 25th, his will was pre- 
pared. On February 10th, his younger daughter, 
Judith, married Thomas Quiney. On March 25th lie 
signed his will. Just one month later, on April 25th, 



SHAKSPERE'S LIFE 21 

1616, " Will. Shakspere, gent.," was buried in the 
church of Stratford. 

All the rest of the story — how he died on his 
fifty-second birthday, how undue merry-making had 
something, to do with it, how he made a doggerel 
epitaph for John Combe, and so on — is mere legend. 
Every known fact we have before us, except per- 
haps the fact that the editors of the Centurie of 
Prayse, who are a shade over-eager, have discovered 
more than a hundred 1 allusions to Shakspere between 
1592 and 1616. At first sight, the record seems 
very meagre. 

On reflection, though, it tells more of a story than 
at first seems the case. The son of a country trades- 
man who was beginning to improve his condition, 
Shakspere, in early youth, met with family misfor- 
tune, and made at best an imprudent marriage. 
Until the age of twenty-three, he was still in these 
circumstances. At twenty-eight he had established 
himself as an actor, a dramatist, and a poet in Lon- 
don. At thirty-two he had begun to help his 
father, and incidentally the family name of Shakspere, 
back into local consideration. At thirty-four he was 
a landed proprietor, a person who could be useful to 
country friends visiting London, and — at least in 
the opinion of Francis Meres — a first-rate literary 
figure. Till forty-five he maintained his professional 
position, constantly strengthening himself as a land- 

1 Including those published in Fresh Allusions : New Shakspere 
Society, 1886. 



22 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

holder meanwhile. From forty-five to fifty-two, he 
was a country gentleman of Stratford. Prosaic 
enough this looks at first sight ; but, to whoever will 
sympathetically appreciate the motives which have 
made Englishmen what Englishmen have been, it is 
not without its heroic side. We have had cant 
enough about snobbishness. A true-hearted Eng- 
lishman always wants to die a gentleman if he can ; 
and here, in the facts of Shakspere's life, we have 
the record of an Englishman, who, from a position 
which might easily have lapsed into peasantry, 
worked his way, in the end, to one of lasting local 
dignity. 



Ill 



LITERATURE AND THE THEATRE IN ENGLAND 
UNTLL 1587 

[The best popular history of English Literature is still Stopford 
Brooke's Primer. The best popular work on Elizabethan Literature 
is Saintsbury's ; the best on the early drama is Addington Symonds's 
Skakspere's Predecessors. More satisfactory than any of these, as far 
as it goes, is Frederick Ryland's Chronological Outlines of English Litera- 
ture. For whoever wishes more thorough treatment of the English 
stage, Mr. A. W. Ward's History of English Dramatic Literature is 
useful ; and Mr. Fleay's Chronicle History of the London Stage, and 
Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama are very valuable.] 

From the facts we have just considered, it is clear 
that in 1587 Shakspere was still at Stratford; and 
that by 1592 he was already so established a dram- 
atist as to be grouped by Robert Greene with Peele 
and Marlowe. In the next year, 1593, the publica- 
tion of Venus and Adonis brings him finally before 
us as a man of letters. The fact that, in 1587, the 
Earl of Leicester's players, the company with which 
he was later associated, paid a professional visit to 
Stratford, has led some people to surmise that when 
they returned to London they took him along. What- 
ever the facts were, we cannot be far wrong in as- 
suming that the state of English Literature in 1587 
fairly represents what Shakspere found, just as the 



24 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

state of things in 1612 fairly represents what Shaks- 
pere left. 

His literary activity, then, his productive period, we 
may assume to be limited to twenty-five years, the last 
sixteen of the reign of Elizabeth and the first nine of 
the reign of James I. The state of our dramatic lit- 
erature during this period, and to a great degree that 
of English poetry, may be adequately studied, for our 
purposes, in works generally assigned to him. To ap- 
preciate these, however, we must first glance at the 
state of English Literature which immediately pre- 
cedes them. 

Putting aside Chaucer, who was already as solitary 
a survival of a time long past as he is to-day, we may 
broadly say that during the first twenty-nine years of 
Queen Elizabeth's reign, English Literature contained 
and produced hardly anything permanent; a few 
lyrics, like Wyatt's Forget not Yet, or Lyly's Cupid 
and Oampaspe, still to be found in any standard 
collection, may be said to comprise the whole 
literature of that period which has survived. In a 
traditional way, however, certain writers of the time 
remain familiar ; without knowing quite what their 
work is like, people in general have a nebulous idea 
that the work exists, and at least formerly was of some 
importance. The earliest of these writers do not 
strictly belong to the time of Elizabeth at all. Both 
Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey, who are 
commonly regarded as the pioneers of our modern 
literature, died in the reign of Henry VIII. Their 



ENGLISH LITERATURE UNTIL 1537 25 

writings, however, remained chiefly in manuscript 
until 1557, the year before the accession of Elizabeth. 
In that year, together with a considerable number of 
lyrics by other and later men, their songs and sonnets 
were published in Tottel's Miscellany . With that pub- 
lication, modern English Literature, we may say, first 
became accessible to the general public. 

By that time, as a hasty glance at the Miscellany, 
will suffice to show, the movement begun fifteen 
or twenty years before by Wyatt and Surrey had 
already progressed considerably. Wyatt was a gen- 
tleman, an ambassador, a statesman ; Surrey, eldest 
son of the Duke of Norfolk, was a man of the highest 
rank and fashion. Wyatt, the elder by fourteen 
years, was by far the more serious character. The 
fact that nowadays they are commonly grouped 
together is due not so much to any close personal 
relation, as to the accident that their works were 
first printed in the same volume. It is justified his- 
torically, however, by the relation which their work 
bears to what precedes and to what follows. These 
courtiers, these men whose lives were passed in the 
most distinguished society of their time, found not 
only the literature, but even the language, of their 
native England in a state which, compared with the 
contemporary French or Italian, may fairly be called 
barbarous. Each alike did his best to imitate or to 
reproduce in English the civilized literary forms al- 
ready prevalent on the Continent. Each, for example, 
translated sonnets of Petrarch ; each made original 



26 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

sonnets after the manner of that master ; and Sur- 
rey, among other things, was the first to use English 
blank verse, in a careful, and by no means ineffec- 
tive, translation of two books of the JEneid. Each, 
in short, made a considerable number of linguistic 
and metrical experiments ; and neither seems to 
have thought of publication. Manuscript copies of 
their verses were multiplied among their private 
friends. A fashion was started, until at last the 
ability to play gracefully with words became almost 
as essential to the equipment of an Elizabethan gen- 
tleman as the ability to ride or to fence. As a 
rule, however, these men of fashion followed the 
example of Wyatt and Surrey to the end. They im- 
proved the power and the flexibility of the language 
surprisingly ; but they did not publish. In 1586, for 
example, Sir Philip Sidney died ; the Arcadia, the 
first of his published works, did not appear till 1590. 
As late as 1598, too, we may remember that, accord- 
ing to Meres, the " sugred sonnets " of Shakespere, 
who was by no means a man of rank, followed the 
fashion in being reserved for his private friends. In 
1587, then, one may safely say that for above thirty 
years a certain graceful poetic culture had been the 
fashion ; that its chief conscious object — so far as it 
had any — was to civilize a barbarous language ; that 
it delighted in oddity and novelty, and that it inclined 
to disdain publication. 

There was no want of publication, however. The 
prose books of Roger Ascham, already rather anti- 



ENGLISH LITERATURE UNTIL 1587 27 

quated, proved that a scholarly man could write very 
charmingly in English prose. Ascham was tutor to 
both Lady Jane Grey and Queen Elizabeth. He pub- 
lished a book on archery, and another on education, 
which are still pleasant to read ; and he intended to 
write one on cock-fighting, which might have been 
more amusing than either of the others. Again, Foxe's 
great Acts and Monuments, traditionally called the 
Book of Martyrs, was, from 1563, as generally acces- 
sible as was the early version of the English Bible. 
Both of these naturally concerned themselves little 
with literary form ; Foxe was so grimly in earnest 
that his views still affect the opinion held by English- 
speaking people concerning the Roman Catholic 
Church. Incidentally, however, he proved with what 
tremendous effect the English language might be 
used for serious narrative. There were increasing 
numbers of translations from the classics, too, of 
which the most generally remembered now are prob- 
ably Golding's Ovid and North's Plutarch. There 
were popular translations, as well, of less serious 
foreign literature, of which the most familiar in tra- 
dition is Paynter's Palace of Pleasure, a collection 
of tales largely from Boccaccio. These translations, 
from classic tongues or from foreign, were alike in 
their object of supplying to a people whose curiosity was 
awakened material that should for the moment have 
the charm of novelty. Novelty, too, was what gave a 
charm hardly yet exhausted to those records of ex- 
ploration and discovery which are best typified by 



28 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Hakluyt's Voyages. By these, also, a sentiment of 
patriotism was alike stimulated and gratified ; a state 
of things, which, in a less stimulating form, was repro- 
duced by such historical chronicles as those of Stowe 
and of Holinshed. 

Decidedly the most notable publication for the 
moment, however, was one which in its day was the 
most popular book in English, and which was subse- 
quently so completely neglected that for a century or 
more it was hardly known to be in existence. This 
was John Lyly's JEuphues, first published in 1579, 
and four times republished within six years. In 1587, 
accordingly, its popularity had hardly begun to wane. 
Professedly a novel, this book has no plot to speak of, 
and does not pretend to develop character, or either 
fantastically or plausibly to describe any real or imagi- 
nary state of life. It does pretend to be aphoristic ; 
but the aphorisms it formulates are blamelessly ob- 
vious throughout. In none of the generally essential 
traits of popular fiction, then, does Euphues show 
a trace of such excellence as should account for its 
popularity. The secret of this is to be sought wholly 
in its formal style. This style, which is said by mod- 
ern critics to be closely imitated from the Spanish, 
is probably the most elaborately, fantastically, obvi- 
ously affected in the English language. To any mod- 
ern reader, in spite of a certain prettiness of phrase 
and rhythm, it is persistently and emptily tedious ; 
to the Elizabethan public, on the other hand, it was 
clearly, for a good while, completely fascinating. It 



ENGLISH LITERATURE UNTIL 1587 29. 

not only set a formal fashion of expression which 
was palpable for years in English prose, and is said 
greatly to have influenced actual conversation ; it 
gave our language the word "euphuism," which re- 
mains to this day a generic term for saccharine liter- 
ary affectation. When what seems mere affectation 
has such marked effect, it becomes historically im- 
portant ; to understand the period to which it ap- 
pealed, we must make ourselves somehow feel its 
charm. In the case of Euphues this is not an easy 
task : actually to feel its charm is almost impossible. 
To appreciate wherein its old charm lay, however, is 
not so hard as at first one fears ; from beginning to 
end, the book phrases everything — no matter how 
simple — ■ in the most elaborately unexpected way that 
Lyly, who was perhaps the most ingenious writer 
known to English literature, could devise. The only 
kind of taste to which its far-fetched allusions, its 
thin juvenile pedantry, its elaborate circumlocutions, 
its endless balance and alliteration, can appeal is a 
taste which incessantly craves verbal novelty. Were 
there no other proof than the popularity of Euphues 
affords, there would be proof enough that, in 1587, 
the one thing which the literary and fashionable 
public of England most admired was a new, palpably 
clever turn of phrase. 

If further proof were demanded, however, the next 
piece of evidence might be Spenser's Shepherd's Cal- 
endar, and his correspondence with Gabriel Harvey 
concerning English versifying. These two works, 



30 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

exactly contemporary with Uuphues, were almost 
all that Spenser had as yet published. Not a line 
of the Faerie Queene, or of the Amoretti, or of the 
lesser verse by which he is now known, was as yet 
before the public ; nor was there yet in print a line 
of either Bacon, Marlowe, Sidney, Drayton, Ralegh, 
Daniel, Chapman, Hooker, Dekker, Middleton, Hey- 
woocl, or Ben Jonson. Elizabethan Literature, as we 
now understand the term, was still a thing of the* 
future. 

To sum up this necessarily hasty review : in 1587, 
English Literature, which was between forty and 
fifty years old, consisted in the first place of increas- 
ingly successful efforts to reduce to literary form a 
hitherto barbarous language, and in the second, of 
such technical feats of skill with this new vehicle of 
expression as were bound by ingenious novelty to 
please both cultivated and popular fancy. Besides 
these, to be sure, it contained a fair amount of pass- 
able translation from classical and foreign authors, 
and an increasing amount of sometimes dry and 
sometimes vigorously effective narrative, generally 
historical. In a word, the curiosity of England was 
aroused ; whatever, in substance or in form, satisfied 
curiosity was welcome ; and among the more fashion- 
able classes this passion for curious novelty took the 
form of inexhaustible appetite for verbal ingenuity. 

So much for what was then recognized as litera- 
ture, — what was circulated in manuscript among 
people of fashion, and what found its way, either 



THE THEATRE UNTIL 1587 31 

directly or surreptitiously, into print. Along with this 
there was beginning to flourish a distinct school of 
literature which as yet had hardly been recognized 
as such. This was the theatre. From time imme- 
morial something like a popular drama had flourished 
in England. The earliest form in which we know it 
is the Miracle Plays, which were popular dramatic 
presentations, often in startlingly contemporary 
terms, of Scriptural stories, originally produced by 
the clergy, and always more or less under church 
supervision. These were followed by what are called 
" Moralities," where actors personifying various virtues 
and vices would go through some very simple dra- 
matic action, usually enlivened by the pranks of 
" Iniquity " or some other Vice. 1 Then came similar 
productions, called " Interludes," which differed 
from the Moralities only in pretending to deal with 
less abstract personages. The Miracle Plays, which 
persisted at least well into the Sixteenth Century, 
were generally performed on large portable stages, 
wheeled through the streets like the " floats " in a 
modern procession ; the actors were generally the 
members of the local guilds, each one of which would 
traditionally have in charge its own part of the Scrip- 
ture story and its own travelling stage. The Mo- 
ralities and Interludes, on the other hand, which 

1 These old Moralities act better than you would suppose. One 
given verbatim not long ago, though acted by amateurs who were all 
friends of the audience, had enough dramatic force to hold attention 
like a good modern play. 



32 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

required hardly any stage setting, might be played 
anywhere — in an inn-yard, in a gentleman's hall, 
in some open square. While sometimes performed 
by such occasional actors as always kept charge of 
the Miracle Plays, the Moralities and Interludes 
tended to fall into the hands of strolling players and 
such other half-artistic vagrants as are sure to exist 
anywhere. The mountebanks whom one may still 
see here and there, at country fairs or in the train 
of quack doctors, preserve, with little change, the 
aspect of things in which the English drama grew. 

When the classical scholarship of the Renaissance 
began to declare itself in England, it attempted, as 
in other countries, to revive something resembling 
the Roman stage. In Ralph Roister Doister and 
in Cfammer Gurton's Needle we have examples of 
efforts, at once human and scholarly, to civilize the 
English theatre. In Gorboduc, the first English work 
in which blank verse is used for dramatic purposes, 
we have a conscientious effort, on the part of schol- 
arly people, to produce in English a tragedy which 
should emulate what were then deemed the divine 
excellences of Seneca. These efforts, essentially 
similar to those which until the present century con- 
trolled the development of the theatre in France, 
were very pleasing to the learned few ; witness the 
familiar passage about the theatre in Sir Philip 
Sidney's Defence of Poesy. On the other hand, 
there is little evidence that they ever appealed much 
to the popular fancy, which certainly persisted in 



THE THEATRE UNTIL 1537 33 

enjoying the wholl} r unscholarly traditions of Mir- 
acles, Moralities, and Interludes. These permitted in 
matters theatrical a range of conventional freedom, — 
a serene disregard of limitations either of time or of 
place, a bold mixture of high matters and low, serious 
and comic, spiritual and obscene, — which, to any- 
cultivated taste, was quite as barbarous as were the 
linguistic and metrical crudities reduced to formal 
civilization by the literary successors of Wyatt and 
Surrey. For a while it looked as if the theatre of 
the people would permanently separate itself from 
all serious literary tradition. 

At least from 1576, however, there were regular 
theatres in London. To a modern mind, though, that 
very term is misleading. An Elizabethan theatre, 
a structure adapted to conventions which had arisen 
among strolling players, was very unlike a theatre of 
the present day. At least the pit was open to the 
sky; there was no scenery in the modern sense of 
the word; there was no proscenium, no curtain; and 
the more fashionable part of the audience sat in 
chairs on either side of the stage, smoking pipes after 
tobacco came into fashion, eating fruit, and, if they 
saw fit, making game of the performance. The 
actors, meanwhile, invariably male, — for no woman 
appeared on the English stage until after the Resto- 
ration, — appeared with what dignity they could be- 
tween these two groups of spectators ; and whatever 
the period of the play they were performing, — clas- 
sical, mediaeval, or contemporary, — they always wore 



34 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

gorgeous clothes of recent fashion, perhaps discarded 
court finery bought second-hand, and the like. Al- 
together, the nearest modern approach to the stage 
conditions of an Elizabethan theatre is to be found 
in those of the Chinese theatres which may some- 
times be discovered in the Chinese quarters of 
American cities. It was for such a stage as this 
that all the plays of Shakspere were written. 

Decidedly before 1587, however, this unpromising 
place had begun to produce plays still of some in- 
terest, at least historically. Three names of that 
period are remembered in all histories of English 
Literature, — the names of Robert Greene, George 
Peele, and Christopher Marlowe. These men, all 
under thirty years of age, had all been educated 
at one of the universities, and were all black sheep. 
Greene, for example, is known to have deserted his 
wife, and to have lived with a woman named Ball, 
whose brother was hanged at Tyburn ; Peele, whether 
rightly or wrongly, was, almost in his own time, made 
the hero of a crudely obscene jest-book ; Marlowe was 
killed at the age of twenty-nine, in a tavern brawl. 
Yet, by 1587, all three of these men had produced 
plays of which any reader of Shakspere may form an 
idea by glancing at Henry VI, Richard III., and 
Richard II. There is much argument among critics 
as to whether a considerable part of Henry VI. may 
not actually have been written by one or more of the 
three, and as to whether Richard III. be not rather 
Marlowe's work than Shakspere's ; while Richard II, 



THE THEATRE UNTIL 1587 35 

though generally admitted to be Shakspere's own, is 
undoubtedly written in Marlowe's manner. All three 
of these men combined good education with graceless 
lives and active wits. Historically they mark a fusion 
between the traditions of culture and those of the 
popular theatre. Far removed as their work is from 
the pseudo-classic tendency so much admired by 
Sidney, it is just as far removed from the crudely 
popular Interludes and Moralities ; and in technical 
style — in freedom and fluency of verse — it is much 
better than anything before it. Some of Greene's 
lyrics are thoroughly good ; at least in David and 
Bethsabe, Peele's work shows signs of lasting dra- 
matic merit ; 1 while Marlowe not only made blank 
verse the permanent vehicle of English tragedy, but 
actually expressed in dramatic form a profound sense 
of tragic fact. 

Tamburlaine, to be sure, the first of Marlowe's 
tragedies, is assigned to this very year, 1587 ; and is 
commonly spoken of as if chiefly remarkable for its 
use of blank verse, finally delivering the stage " from 
jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits," and for such 
indubitably bombastic passages as " Holla ! ye pam- 
per'd jades of Asia ! " 2 In point of fact, however, it 
is still more notable for real power. This shows itself 
clearly in occasional passages, like the famous one on 
beauty : 3 — 



1 See particularly the notahle scene of the drunken loyal TJrias and 
the perfidious David. 

2 Part I. Act IV. sc. iii. 3 Part I. Act V. sc. ii. 



36 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

" If all the pens that ever poets held 
Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts, 
And every sweetness that inspir'd their hearts, 
Their minds, and muses on admired themes ; 
If all the heavenly quintessence they still 
From their immortal flowers of poesy, 
Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive 
The highest reaches of a human wit ; 
If these had made one poem's period, 
And all combin'd in beauty's worthiness, 
Yet should there hover in their restless heads 
One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, 
Which into words no virtue can digest." 

Still more clearly, however, the lasting power of 
Marlowe shows itself in his whole conception even of 
Tarnburlaine. If we will but accept the conventions, 
and forget them ; if we will admit the monotony of 
end-stopped lines and the sonorous bombast which 
delighted the crude lyric appetite of early Elizabethan 
playgoers ; if we will only ask ourselves what all this 
was meant to express, we shall find in Tarnburlaine 
itself a profound, lasting, noble sense of the great 
human truth reiterated by the three later plays 1 
which Marlowe has left us. Like these, Tarnburlaine 
expresses, in grandly symbolic terms, the eternal 
tragedy inherent in the conflict between human aspira- 
tion and human power. No poet ever felt this more 
genuinely than Marlowe ; none ever expressed it more 
firmly or more constantly. By 1587, then, the English 
stage had already become the seat not only of very 
animated play-writing, and of charming lyric verse, 

1 Dr. Faustus, the Jew of Malta, and Edward II. 



TILE THEATRE UNTIL 1587 37 

but actually, though unobserved, of noble philosophic 
poetry. 

It is with these men, and other men like them, that 
Shakspere is grouped by Robert Greene in the Groats- 
worth of Wit, which we remember belongs to 1592. 
Perhaps even more than theirs, however, the dramatic 
work of John Lyly marks the permanent divergence 
of English taste from the pseudo-classic principles 
commended by Sidney. Lyly's Euphues, as we have 
seen, was in its day the most popular book in the 
English language. It appeared in 1579 ; the next 
year appeared its sequel, Euphues and his England. 
Like the play-writing roysterers at whom we have just 
glanced, Lyly w r as a university man ; unlike them, 
he seems to have had a strong tendency to respect- 
able life. For some ten years after the success of 
Euphues there is evidence that he hung about the 
court, seeking office or some such advancement ; 
and during these ten years, his literary work took 
a dramatic form. Written rather for court pag- 
eants, or for performance by choir-boys, than for the 
popular stage, Lyly's plays seem nowadays thin and 
amateurish ; they quite lack the robust, unconscious 
carelessness of the regular Elizabethan theatre. Like 
Euj)hues 7 howevGr, they are distinctly things of fashion ; 
as such, they prove that, in theatrical affairs as well 
as in popular, fashionable taste had taken a definitely 
romantic turn. While Lyly threw classic form to the 
winds, caring as little for the unities as the wildest 
scribbler of Moralities, a thousand allusions and 



38 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

turns of thought and phrase prove that he had read 
1 pretty deep in the classics, and read for fun. He was 
romantic in form, then, not for want of knowing better, 
but as a matter of deliberate taste or policy. As such, 
too, he was not only persistently euphuistic in style, 
but He was also constantly experimental in matters of 
mere stage-business. In his comedies, for example, 
one finds, for the first time in English, such fan- 
tastically ingenious plays on words and repartee as 
nowadays, reaching their acme in Much Ado About 
Nothing, are commonly thought peculiar to Shakspere. 
Again, perhaps influenced by the fact that all his 
players were male, and consequently ill at ease in 
skirts, he first introduced on the English stage the 
device so repeatedly used by Shakspere of disguis- 
ing his heroine as a man. Throughout, in short, 
with frankly persistent ingenuity, these light, grace- 
ful, fantastic plays of Lyly's appeal, like the style of 
Euphues, to a taste which delights above all else in 
clever, apparently civilized novelty. 

Such, in general, was the state of the English 
stage in 1587. Committed to the still untrammelled 
freedom of romantic form, it displayed in its fashion- 
able aspect and in its popular alike every evidence of 
appealing to an insatiable taste for novelty. The very 
simplicity of its material conditions, however, combined 
with the prevalent literary taste of the time to make the 
actual novelties it offered to its public principally ver- 
bal. With none of the modern distractions of scenery 
or of realistic costume, with hardly any mechanical help 



THE THEATRE UNTIL 1587 39 

to the temporary illusion which must always be dear to 
a theatre-going heart, an Elizabethan audience found its 
attention centred, to a degree now hardly imaginable, 
on the actual words of the play. While certain con- 
ventional kinds of drama, then, which may be discussed 
best in connection with the actual works of Shakspere, 
were beginning to define themselves, all had in com- 
mon the trait of a constantly ingenious, experimental 
phrasing, to be appreciated nowadays only when you 
can force yourself into the mood of an every-day 
theatre-goer who should enjoy a new turn of language 
as heartily as a modern playgoer would enjoy a new 
popular tune. What now appeals to us in Marlowe's 
Tamburlaine is the profound tragic feeling which 
underlies it ; in its own day what made it popular was 
the ranting sonorousness of its verse. 

In all but purely lyric style, clearly enough, the 
taste of 1587 was still rather childishly crude. With 
lyric verse the case was different. The fashion of 
verbal experiment, which had persisted since the 
time of Wyatt, combined with the thin melody of 
contemporary music not only to make words do much 
of the essentially musical work of which modern song- 
writers are relieved by our enormous musical develop- 
ment, but also to develop the positive lyric power of 
the language to a degree which has never been sur- 
passed. Wyatt himself, we have seen, wrote Forget 
not Yet; John Lyly wrote Cupid and Campaspe. 
What delights one in these, and in the hundreds of 
songs for which we must here let them be typical, is 



40 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

not that they mean much, but that, with indefinable 
subtlety, they are so exquisitely musical. To such 
effects as theirs the public of 1587 was sensitive to a 
degree now hard to imagine ; the purity of a sense of 
beauty new to a whole nation had not yet been cor- 
rupted. By 1587, then, the Elizabethan lyric was 
almost at its best. Fantastic as the statement seems, 
though, it is probably true that the ultimate secret of 
lyric beauty — the only permanent effect which Eliza- 
bethan literature had as yet achieved — is identical 
with that which made Euphues so popular. The 
lyric poet is technically the most ingenious conceiv- 
able juggler with words. 

For all their common verbal ingenuity, however, 
and their common, eager endeavor to carry out the 
work begun by Wyatt and lastingly to civilize what 
had seemed a wildly barbarous language, the pure 
men of letters, for whom Sidney and Lyly may stand 
representative, differed very widely in private consider- 
ation from the men of the theatre, such as Greene, or 
Peele, or Marlowe. As a class the former were respect- 
able or better ; as a class the latter were disreputable. 
For the moment fashion favored polite literary effort 
to a degree unusual in human history ; the theatre, 
meanwhile, was what the theatre always has been 
everywhere, — the centre not only of artistic activity, 
but also of organized vice. 

We touch here on a delicate matter, which of late 
it has been the fashion to ignore. By rather deliber- 
ately ignoring it, however, most modern critics have 



THE THEATRE UNTIL 1587 41 

failed to make clear the actual circumstances in which 
Shakspere found himself when he came to London. 
Beyond doubt there were good and sturdy men con- 
nected with the Elizabethan stage, just as good and 
sturdy people may always be found among stage-folk 
everywhere. Beyond doubt, the remaining fragments 
of Elizabethan dramatic writing, even if we throw out 
of our consideration the works of Shakspere, comprise 
much, indeed most, of the noblest poetry of their 
time. Equally beyond doubt, however, the Elizabethan 
theatre of 1587 was not a socially respectable place, 
and Elizabethan theatrical people — the Bohemians 
of a society where there was no alternative between 
formal respectability and the full license of profes- 
sional crime — were very low company. 

As early as 1579, one Stephen Gosson, then an 
ardent Puritan, dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney an 
attack on the immorality of poetry and of the stage, 
under the apt title, the School of Abuse. Sidney, who 
had not authorized the dedication, evinced his dis- 
pleasure by coming to the rescue with his Defence of 
Poesy. Gosson was certainly scurrilous, and modern 
critics have usually confined themselves to this aspect 
of his work, which they attribute to the fact that he 
himself had once been little better than one of the 
wicked ; it is said that he had unsuccessfully tried to 
write plays. Sidney's Defence remains a beautiful, ele- 
vated piece of English prose, full of a peculiar quality 
which faintly suggests what the charm of Sidney's 
actual personality must have been. For all this, 



42 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

however, for all the snarling vulgarity of Gosson and 
the noble amenity of Sidney, there is an aspect in 
which Gosson rather than Sidney is in the right. 
Wherever an organized theatre develops itself, one is 
sure to find along with this centre of more or less 
serious art an equally organized centre of moral cor- 
ruption. Without the Elizabethan theatre, to be sure, 
we could never have had Shakspere ; yet the very 
forces which produced Shakspere were producing at 
the same time a growing state of social degradation. 
To our minds, at a distance of three hundred years, 
the Elizabethan theatre seems chiefly the source from 
which has come to us a noble school of poetry. To 
Elizabethan Puritans, to the very men whose blood 
still runs in the veins of New England, the Elizabethan 
poets were the panders who kept full those schools of 
vice, the play-houses. Nor can all the patronizing 
amenity of Sir Philip Sidney, blinding himself like 
other apologists to what he did not choose to see, blind 
us to the fact that the evils which Gosson so hatefully 
attacked were real, lasting, and bound to be the price 
which any society must pay for the enjoyment of a 
professional stage. 

In Gosson's time, too, this state of things affected 
the personal life of theatrical people rather more 
than usual. They were then just emerging from 
the condition of strolling players. None of them 
were yet rich enough to emerge, as Shakspere 
emerged thirty years later, into a solidly respectable 
social station. We have seen what sort of life Greene 



THE THEATRE UNTIL 15S7 43 

lived, and Peele, and Marlowe. Greene, like Marlowe, 
died in a public-house, of which the hostess is said to 
have crowned his body with a laurel wreath. Rol- 
licking, reckless, wicked these old playwrights were, 
for all the beauty of their verse, all the nobility of 
their perceptions. They had their public with them, 
to be sure ; if their plays succeeded, they might prob- 
ably be better paid than any other men of their time 
who had only their wits to live by. Once paid, 
however, they would do little better than riot away 
their earnings in London taverns. 

In view of this, a very familiar part of Shakspere's 
writing seems freshly significant. It was in 1596, we 
may remember, that John Shakspere, for the first 
time described as " gentleman," applied for arms ; and 
in 1597 that Shakspere himself, by the purchase of 
New Place, first became a landed proprietor. To the 
latter of these years, at latest, we must attribute the 
first part of Henry IV, which was entered in the 
Stationers' Register on February 25th, 1597-98. In 
Henry IV. occur those vivid scenes concerning Fal- 
staff and his crew on which our actual knowledge of 
Elizabethan tavern-life is chiefly based. It was in such 
a tavern as makes classic the name of Eastcheap that 
Marlowe met his end ; in just such a place that Greene 
lived with the sister of Cutting Ball, hanged at Tyburn ; 
in such a place, too, must have been cracked the bawdy 
jokes of George Peele. It seems hardly unreasonable, 
then, to guess that Shakspere's wonderful picture of 
the cradle of the Elizabethan drama may have been 



44 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

made at the moment when prosperity at length allowed 
him to emerge into a more decent way of life. How 
ever this may be, there can be no doubt that, in 1587, 
any professional actor must perforce have found him- 
self in such environment as surrounded Falstaff and 
Gadshill, and Peto, and Bardolph, and Mistress 
Quickly. 

To sum up this cursory view of the state of English 
Literature and the English stage at the moment when 
Shakspere's professional life began : Formal Eng- 
lish Literature, which had begun with the work of 
Wyatt, had accomplished only three things, all rather 
slight : it had reduced a barbarous language to 
something like a civilized form ; it had supplied the 
newly awakened national curiosity with a good deal 
of compendious information ; and it had at once 
stimulated and gratified air excessive appetite for 
verbal ingenuity, which delighted in the affectations 
of euphuism, and at the same time relished lyric 
verse of lasting beauty. Meanwhile, this kind of 
thing, though highly fashionable, did not pay particu- 
larly well ; to all appearances not even John Lyly 
made any money to speak of. The theatre, on the 
other hand, had developed the popular trifles of stroll- 
ing players into a fairly established and tolerably 
lucrative kind of drama, whose vigorously romantic 
tendency was much to the taste of fashionable and 
popular audiences alike. In the hands of Marlowe, 
this drama had already at least once been the vehicle 
of profound tragic feeling ; yet Marlowe himself was 



THE THEATRE UNTIL 1587 45 

popular, not as a great tragic poet, but as a daring 
verbal and formal innovator. The stage and litera- 
ture alike, then, were chiefly notable for eager, experi- 
mental pursuit of novelty. They differed chiefly in 
the fact that while literature, though respectable, was 
merely fantastic, the stage, though increasingly human, 
was very disreputable indeed. 

Among works attributed to Shakspere, there are 
several which, genuine or not, are certainly character- 
istic rather of the period than of the man. In the 
beginning of what purports to be our study of Shaks- 
pere himself, then, we shall find ourselves in some 
degree continuing our study of his time. There, 
rather than here, seems the best place to consider 
such phases of literature as appear in his poems, and 
in the various kinds of drama — comedy, tragedy, and 
history — which had begun to define themselves on 
the stage. All we need now remember is that, at the 
age of twenty three or four, Shakspere found himself, 
with all his work still to do, in the environment at 
which we have just glanced. As we study the devel- 
opment of his work, we shall incidentally glance, too, 
at certain changes in theatrical conditions. What 
our study should begin with is simply this environ- 
ment with which he began. 

Of the temperament of the man whose active life 
began under these circumstances we have no record, 
beyond what we may infer from his work. One very 
familiar passage in his later writing, however, when 
taken in connection with a familiar piece of contem- 



46 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

porary gossip, seems at least suggestive of the possi- 
bilities which lay within him. The bit of gossip is a 
random note preserved in the diary of one John Man- 
ningham, Barrister-at-Law of the Middle Temple, and 
of Bradbonrne, Kent. Writing in 1602 or 1608, with 
no more authority than one " Mr. Curie," he tells a 
story which very possibly is apocryphal, but which 
certainly indicates in what manner of estimation 
Shakspere was held after he had been fifteen years at 
work : J — 

" Upon a tyrne when Burbidge played Rich. 3 there 
was a Citizen gaene soe farr in liking with him, that before 
shee went from the play shee appointed him to come that 
night unto hir by the name of Ri : the 3. Shakespeare 
overhearing their conclusion went before, was intertained, 
and at his game ere Burbedge came. Then message being 
brought that Rich, the 3 d was at the dore, Shakespeare 
caused returne to be made that William the Conquerour was 
before Rich, the 3. Shakespere's name William." 

The familiar passage from Shakspere's own writ- 
ing is the 111th sonnet, which was certainly written 
within a few years of the same date. It gives at least 
a plausible inner glimpse of a life whose outward aspect 
might have justified Manningham's gossip : — 

" 0, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, 
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 
That did not better for my life provide 
Than public means which public manners breeds. 

1 Centurie of Prayse, 45. 



THE THEATRE UNTIL 1587 47 

Thence comes it that ray name receives a brand, 

And almost thence my nature is subdued 

To what it works in, like a dyer's hand: 

Pity me then, and wish I were renew'd; 

Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink 

Potions of eisel 1 'gainst my strong infection ; 

No bitterness that I will bitter think, 

Nor double penance, to correct correction. 

Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye 
Even that your pity is enough to cure me." 

1 Vinegar. 



IV 

THE WORKS OF SHAKSPERE 

From now forth, we shall devote our attention 
chiefly to the works of Shakspere, in which we shall 
endeavor constantly to find traces of his artistic 
individuality. Though, like any technical term of 
criticism, the phrase sound canting, it has a real 
meaning. Any artist, in whatever art, whose work 
deserves serious attention, must either perceive or 
express the matters with which he deals — or better 
still both perceive and express them — in a way pecu- 
liar to himself. The artist's work need not be auto- 
biographic ; everybody knows, for example, that a most 
erratic man may write noble poetrj^, or an estimable 
young girl produce a novel which shocks her mother. 
Any work of art, however, must express something 
which the artist, either in experience or by imagina- 
tive sympathy, has perceived or known. If in the 
work of any artist, then, we succeed in defining traits 
not perceptible in that of others, we succeed, so far as 
these go, in defining his artistic individuality. 

The generally accepted works of Shakspere con- 
sist of two rather long poems, a few short ones not 
distinguishable from his other lyrics, a collection of 
sonnets, and thirty-seven five-act plays, if we count 



THE WORKS OF SHAKSPERE 49 

separately the two parts of Henry IV. and the three 
of Henry VI. These works we shall generally con- 
sider in what appears to be their chronological order. 
Partly because the two long poems were undoubtedly 
his first publications, however, and partly because 
they are by far the most careful work of his earlier 
period, — and so the most seriously and consciously 
expressive, — we shall consider them first. The plays 
we shall try to arrange in their original order, placing 
the Sonnets, where they probably belong, in the midst 
of the dramatic work. 

In reading this dramatic work, we must never allow 
ourselves to forget that it is not, like the poems and 
the sonnets, pure literature, addressed primarily to 
readers. From beginning to end it was written for 
an actual stage, at the general condition of which we 
have already glanced. So far, then, as we try to 
find the plays expressive of the artistic individ- 
uality of Shakspere, we must keep in mind that they 
are not mere writings, but texts intended to be recited 
by professional actors, under conditions long since 
obsolete, to popular audiences. Incidentally, then, 
while studying the work of Shakspere we must find 
ourselves continually studying the conditions and the 
development of the Elizabethan stage. 

For this reason, our first glance at this stage could 
properly be hasty. As we shall find when we ex- 
amine the first plays attributed to Shakspere, if not 
certainly his own, this stage had already begun to 
develop certain definite kinds of drama, tragic, his- 

4 



50 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

toric, and comic. In a way, then, it is a fortunate 
chance that what seem heyond doubt the earliest of 
the plays are thought by many critics not to be genuine. 
From an uncertainty full of historical suggestion, and 
beyond question full of information concerning his 
artistic environment when his work began, we can 
proceed to certainties among which our earlier doubts 
may help us to define the traits which make Shakspere 
artistically individual. 

For our purposes, we may conceive his complete 
work as grouping itself in four parts. The first in- 
cludes his poems and the plays from Titus Andronicus 
to the Two Gentlemen of Verona ; the second includes 
the plays from the Midsummer Nighfs Bream to 
Twelfth Night; between this and the third, as in 
some degree contemporaneous with both, we shall 
consider the Sonnets; after them Ave shall consider 
the third group of plays, from Julius Coesar to Corio- 
lanus ; Timon of Athens, and Pericles, Prince oj 
Tyre, as transitional and peculiar, we shall glance at 
by themselves ; and finally we shall consider the 
fourth group of plays, from Cymbeline to Henry VIII. 



VENUS AND ADONIS, AND THE EAPE OF LUCEECE 

[Venus and Adonis was entered in the Stationers' Eegister on April 
18th, 1593, by Richard Field, a publisher, who originally came from 
Stratford. It was published in the same year, with a dedication to 
the Earl of Southampton, signed " William Shakespeare." In this 
dedication, of which the terms suggest very slight acquaintance be- 
tween poet and patron, occurs the familiar passage, " But if the first 
heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble 
a god-father, and never after car so barren a land, for fear it yield me 
still so bad a harvest." The poem seems to have been popular. Seven 
editions were published during Shakspere's life-time, and more than 
twent} r allusions to it before 1616 have been discovered. Its source, to 
which it does not closely adhere, was probably Golding's translation 
of Ovid, published in 1567. Concerning its date, we can assert only 
that it was finished, in its present form, by 1593. 

The Rape of Lucrece was entered in the Stationers' Eegister on 
May 9th, 1594. It was published in the same year, by Richard Field, 
with a dedication to the Earl of Southampton, from the terms of which 
it has been inferred that since the publication of Venus and Adonis 
the poet had had personal intercourse with his patron : " The love I 
dedicate to your lordship is without end ; whereof this pamphlet, 
without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have 
of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, 
makes it assured of acceptance." Prefixed to the poem is an " Argu- 
ment," the only known example of Shakspere's non-dramatic prose. 
Five editions were published before 1616, and the Centurie of Praijse 
cites fourteen allusions to it meanwhile. Its precise source is not 
known; the story, at the time very familiar, occurs in Paynter's Palace 
of Pleasure. Concerning its date, we can assert only that it seems 
distinctly to have been subsequent to Venus and Adonis, and that it 
was finished, in its present form, by 1594.] 

For our purposes, these two poems may be grouped 
together. Venus and Adonis, in its own day some- 



52 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

what the more popular, still seems the more notable ; 
in certain aspects the merits of Lucrece are un- 
doubtedly more respectable. Together, however, 
these two poems, so nearly of the same period, rep- 
resent a kind of Elizabethan Literature on which 
we have not as yet touched ; together they reveal 
the same sort of artistic mood and power. In dis- 
cussing them, then, we need not carefully separate 
them ; and if most of our attention be centred on 
Venus and Adonis, we may safely assume that what 
we find true of that is in general terms true also of 
Lucrece. 

From what we have already seen of Elizabethan 
Literature, we have assured ourselves that, at the time 
when these poems were written, polite literature was 
highly fashionable, and the stage in doubtful repute. 
Prom the recorded facts of Shakspere's life we ven- 
tured to make some guesses concerning his tempera- 
ment which might lead us to suppose that, at any 
given moment, his serious interest would centre in 
reputable things. It seems reasonable, then, to infer 
that these poems, in all respects far more careful 
than his early dramatic writings, represent the kind of 
thing to which, at least for the moment, he would 
have preferred to devote himself. If so, he would 
probably have thought this purely literary work far 
more important than his better paid, but less elaborate, 
work for the stage. 

The kind of pure literature represented by these 
poems is akin to what we have already considered. 



VENUS AND ADONIS, AND LUCRECE 53 

From the time of Wyatt and Surrey forward, fashion- 
able literature had shown the influence of the Re- 
naissance in two ways. In the first place, starting 
with Wyatt's sonnets, it had constantly, and with 
increasing success, tried to imitate and to domesti- 
cate the formal graces of foreign culture. In the 
second place, starting perhaps with Surrey's trans- 
lation of the ./Eneid, it had tried to inspire itself with 
the spirit of the classics, — for the moment as fresh 
to people who cared for literature as to-day, after 
three centuries of pedantry and editing, they seem 
stale, — and to reproduce in the native language of 
England something resembling their effect. To this 
latter tendency we owe such literature as the poems 
of Shakspere exemplify. What they attempt is 
simply to tell, in new and excellent phrase, stories 
which have survived from classical antiquity. 

In this respect, as well as in some others, they 
have many points of likeness to much Italian paint- 
ing of the preceding century. In each case, the artist 
— poet or painter — turned to the revived classics 
with a full appetite for pagan enjoyment ; in each, he 
endeavored to tell in rich contemporary terms the 
stories he found there ; in each, the phase of classical 
literature which appealed to his taste was chiefly 
the decadent literature of Rome. At first, it would 
seem as if the great popularity of Ovid were due half 
to his erotic license, and half to the fact that he wrote 
easy Latin. On further consideration, the question 
looks less simple. The liking of Renascent Europe 



54 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

for the later classics is very similar to the liking of 
our grandfathers for the Apollo Belvedere and the 
Venus de' Medici, for Guido Reni and Carlo Dolce. 
Freshly awakened artistic perception is apt to prefer 
the graces of some past decadence to the simple, pure 
beauty of really great periods. Such -final culture 
as can separate good from bad, cleaving only to what 
is best, is the fruit of prolonged critical earnest- 
ness. What these poems of Shakspere, and the others 
of their kind, first evince, then, is a state of culture 
alive to the delights of past civilization, but too young 
to be soundly critical. 

Choosing their subjects, accordingly, not from the 
grander myths of Greece, but from the later ones of 
Rome, the Elizabethan narrators of classic story pro- 
ceeded to treat them in a spirit very different from 
what generally prevails nowadays. A contemporary 
of our own who should choose to relate anew some 
familiar classic tradition would be apt to infuse into 
it, if he could, some new significance, somewhat as 
Goethe infused permanent philosophic meaning into 
the mediaeval legend of Faust. The object of the 
Elizabethan narrative poet, on the other hand, like 
that of the Italian painters, was simply to tell the 
story as effectively as he could. He bothered himself 
little about what it might signify ; he permitted him- 
self the utmost freedom of phrase and accessory ; as a 
rule, he never thought of employing any but contem- 
porary terms. Like his own stage, he dressed his 
characters in the actual fashions of his own day; if 



VENUS AND ADONIS; AND LUCRECE 55 

he made them splendid and attractive, he had dune 
his work. What originality he might show was al- 
most wholly a matter of phrase. His plot he frankly 
borrowed; his style was his own, and the more ingen- 
iously novel he could make it, the better. Like the 
other writers of the early Elizabethan period, he 
proves ultimately to have been an enthusiastic verbal 
juggler. 

To understand Shakspere's poems, then, we must 
train ourselves to consider them as, in all probability, 
little else than elaborate feats of phrase-making. This 
does not mean that they are necessarily empty. A 
line or two from Lucrece, chosen quite at random, 
will serve to illustrate the real state of things : — 

" For men have marble, women waxen, minds, 
And therefore are they forni'd as marble will." l 

Here is clearly a general truth about human nature, 
expressed with considerable felicity ; and that is the 
aspect in which any modern reader would consider it. 
Here too, though, and equally plainly, is an allitera- 
tive, euphuistic antithesis between the hardness of 
marble and the softness of wax, resulting in a meta- 
phor probably fresher three hundred years ago than it 
seems to day, but even then far-fetched ; and that is 
the aspect in which the Elizabethan reader would have 
been apt to see it. What he would have relished is 
the subtle alliteration on m and w, the obvious anti- 
thesis, and the slight remoteness of the metaphor ; so 

1 Lucrece, 1240. 



56 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

far as he was concerned, the fact that the lines com- 
pactly express a general truth would have seemed, 
if meritorious at all, only incidentally so. We touch 
here on a state of things now rarely understood ; it 
is more than probable that the lasting felicity of much 
Elizabethan poetry, and so of Shakspere's own, is 
largely accidental. Words and ideas are not easily 
extricable ; whoever plays with either is sure to do 
something with the other. Nowadays it is the fashion 
to disdain verbal ingenuity, to look always rather at 
the thought than at the phrase ; in Shakspere's time 
this state of things was completely reversed. As 
surely as our own thinkers sometimes blunder upon 
phrases, though, the Elizabethan phrase-makers — by 
Shakspere's time far more skilful in their art than our 
modern thinkers in their cogitations — oftener and 
oftener managed incidentally to say something final. 

In deciding that the poems of Shakspere show him 
to be chiefly an enthusiastic, careful maker of phrases, 
and so incidentally of aphorisms, we declare him to 
have been, in temper and in method, Elizabethan ; we 
do not individualize him. Our object throughout this 
study, however, is if possible to see him as an indi- 
vidual. To do this we may best compare his work 
with other work of the same period. The comparison 
is obviously at hand. In 1593, the year when Venus 
and Adonis appeared, Marlowe was killed. He left 
unfinished a poem called Hero and Leander, subse- 
quently concluded by Chapman. By comparing Mar- 
lowe's poem with the poems of Shakspere, we may 



VENUS -VXD ADONIS, AND LUCRECE 57 

get some notion of Shakspere's literary individuality. 
What we have seen so far is true not only of Shaks- 
pere, but of Marlowe too, and generally of their con- 
temporaries ; what we shall try to see now is something 
more definite. 

The effect of Marlowe's Hero and Leander is very 
distinct. Frankly erotic in motive, thoroughly sen- 
suous in both conception and phrase, it never seems 
corrupt. Beyond doubt it is a nudity ; but it is among 
the few nudities in English Literature which one 
groups instinctively with the grand, unconscious nudi- 
ties of painting or sculpture. Conscienceless it seems, 
impulsive, full of half- fantastic but constant imagina- 
tion, unthinkingly pagan, — above all else, in its own 
way normal. One accepts it, one delights in it, one 
does not forget it, and one is not a bit the worse for 
the memory, in thought or in conduct. 

Equally distinct is the effect of Venus and Adonis, 
whose motive resembles that of Hero and Leander 
enough to make it the better of Shakspere's poems 
for this comparison. No more erotic, rather less 
sensuous in both conception and phrase, it some- 
how seems, for all its many graver passages, more 
impure. It is such a nudity as suggests rather the 
painting of modern Paris than that of Titian's Venice. 
It is not conscienceless, not swiftly impulsive, not 
quite pagan, — above all, not quite normal. If one 
think only of its detail, it is sometimes altogether 
delightful and admirable ; if one think of it as a 
whole, 



58 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

gins to wonder whether an ideal Shakspere, in maturer 
life, ought not to have been a bit ashamed of it. 
Surely, one feels, the man who wrote this knew per- 
fectly well the difference between good and evil, and 
did not write accordingly. 

It is hard to realize that such a contrast of lit- 
erary effect must come largely from differences in 
style ; yet obviously this is the fact. One chief dis- 
tinction between Marlowe's poem and Shakspere's 
is clearly that in the one case a number of words 
were chosen and put together by one man, and in 
the other by another. The cause of their notable 
differences, then, may confidently be sought in specific 
comparison of detail ; if we can discover this cause 
we shall have discovered something which clearly 
distinguishes Shakspere from Marlowe, and so helps 
us toward a notion of his individuality. 

The first lines of Venus and Adonis describe 



'" Even as the sun with purple-colour'd face 
Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn, 
Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase ; 
Hunting he loved, hut love he laugh'd to scorn." 

In Hero and Leander there is a similar description 
of the same time of day 1 : — 

" Now had the Morn espied her lover's steeds ; 
Whereat she starts, puts on her purple weeds, 
And, red for anger that he stay'd so long, 
All headlong throws herself the clouds among." 

1 Second Sestiad. 



VENUS AND ADONIS, AND LUCRECE 59 

In both descriptions there is conventional mytho- 
logical allusion, in both the figurative language refers 
to the purple hue often perceptible at dawn ; yet de- 
spite this similarity, the difference of effect is almost 
as marked as that of the poems they come from. 
This difference is not all due to the greater compact- 
ness of Shakspere, who tells in two lines as much as 
Marlowe tells in four ; it is due still more to the fact 
that of Shakspere's four lines all but the second 
might, in real life, be literally true, while all four 
lines of Marlowe deal with pure mythological 
fancy. 

The contrast thus indicated persists throughout. 
Here is Marlowe's description of Hero's costume : 1 

" The outside of her garments were of lawn, 
The lining, purple silk, with gilt stars drawn ; 
Her wide sleeves green, and border'd with a grove 
Where Venus in her naked glory strove 
To please the careless and disdainful eyes 
Of proud Adonis, that before her lies ; 
Her kirtle blue, whereon was many a stain, 
Made with the blood of wretched lovers slain. 
Upon her head she ware a myrtle wreath, 
From whence her veil reach'd to the ground beneath : 
Her veil was artificial flowers and leaves, 
Whose workmanship both man and beast deceives." 

Compare with this Shakspere's description of the 
horse of Adonis 2 — in Shakspere's poem, we may 
remember, no one is quite so thoroughly clothed as 
Hero : — ■ 

1 First Sestiad. 2 Line 295 seq. 



60 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

" Round-hoof d, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, 
Broad breast, full eye, small head and nostril wide, 
High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong, 
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide : 

Look, what a horse should have he did not lack, 

Save a proud rider on so proud a back." 

Again, compare the similes and the action and the 
generalizations in the passages which follow. Here is 
Marlowe's description of the first meeting of Hero and 
Leander : — 

" It lies not in our power to love or hate, 
For will in us is over-rul'd by fate. 
When two are stript, long ere the course begin, 
We wish that one should lose, the other win ; 
And one especially do we affect 
Of two gold ingots, like in each respect : 
The reason no man knows ; let it suffice 
What we behold is censur'd by our eyes. 
Where both deliberate, the love is slight : 
Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight 1 1 
He kneel'd ; but unto her devoutly pray'd : 
Chaste Hero to herself thus softly said, 
' Were I the saint he worships, I would hear him ; ' 
And, as she spake those words, came somewhat near him." 

And here is Shakspere's description of the last meet- 
ing 2 of Venus and Adonis. Having caught sight of 
him wounded, 

"As the snail, whose tender horns being hit, 
Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain, 
And there, all smother'd up, in shade doth sit, 
Long after fearing to creep forth again ; 

1 Cited, we remember, in As You Like It, III. v. 83. 

2 Lines 1033-1068. 



VENUS AND ADONIS, AND LUCRECE 61 

So, at his bloody view, her eyes are fled 
Into the deep dark cabins of her head." 

[Then] " being open'd, threw unwilling light 
Upon the wide wound that the boar had trench'd 
In his soft flank ; whose wonted lily white 
With purple tears, that his wound wept, was drench'd : 
No flower was nigh, no grass, herb, leaf, or weed, 
But stole his blood and seem'd with him to bleed. 

"Upon his hurt she looks so steadfastly, 
That her sight dazzling makes tha wound seem three ; 
And then she reprehends her mangling eye, 
That makes more gashes where no breach should be : 

His face seems twain, each several limb is doubled ; 

For oft the eye mistakes, the brain being troubled." 

These examples are more than enough to indi- 
cate both the precise difference in the effect of 
the two poems, and its cause. From beginning 
to end, Marlowe is not literal, not concrete ; he 
never makes you feel as if what he described were 
actually happening in any real world. From begin- 
ning to end, on the other hand, Shakspcre is con- 
stantly, minutely true to nature. While the action 
of Hero and Leander occurs in some romantic no- 
where, inhabited by people whose costume, if des- 
cribable, is quite unimaginable, the action of Venus 
and Adonis occurs in Elizabethan England, where men 
know the points of horses. The absence from Mar- 
lowe's poem of all pretence to reality saves it from 
apparent corruption ; in Shakspere's poem, incessant 
suggestions of reality produce the contrary effect. 



62 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

A very brief comparison of detail will show the 
technical means by which this difference is made ap- 
parent. Take two lines from Marlowe — one a simile, 
the other a generalization — and place beside them 
two lines of similar import from Shakspere : — 
" When two are stript, long ere the course begin," 
writes Marlowe ; 

" Or as the snail, whose tender horns being hit," 

writes Shakspere. In Marlowe's line, only one word — 
stript — is concrete enough to suggest a vivid visual 
image ; in Shakspere's line, there are four words — 
snail, tender, horns, and hit — each of which is as 
vividly concrete as the most vivid word of Marlowe's. 
Again, 

" Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight 1 " 
writes Marlowe ; 

" For oft the eye mistakes, the brain being troubled," 

writes Shakspere. In Marlowe's generalization, the 
words are simply general throughout ; in Shakspere's, 
they are so concrete as to amount to a plain statement 
of physiological fact. 

This distinguishing trait — that, to a remarkable 
degree, Shakspere's words stand for actual con- 
cepts — pervades not only Venus and Adonis, but 
also Lucrece. It is more palpable in the former 
poem only because its effect there is so start- 
lingly different from that produced by Marlowe's 
more nebulous vocabulary. It pervades not only the 



VENUS AND ADONIS, AND LUCRECE 63 

poems, but the plays, too ; beyond reasonable doubt 
it is the trait which distinguishes Shakspere not only 
among his contemporaries but from almost any other 
English writer. 

At first sight, this concreteness of phrase seems to 
indicate extreme intensity of conscious thought, on 
which conclusion have been based many worship- 
ping expositions of the almost divine wisdom and 
philosophy of Shakspere. The conclusion cannot 
be denied ; it may, however, be reasonably questioned 
even to the point of growing doubt as to whether 
Shakspere himself, the Elizabethan playwright, could 
have had much realizing sense of his own philosophy 
and wisdom. As we have seen, the literary fashion 
of his time delighted above all things else in fresh, in- 
genious turns of phrase ; in Shakspere's work, accord- 
ingly, fresh, ingenious turns of phrase abound. As we 
have seen, too, one cannot combine words and phrases 
without also combining ideas; when language grows 
definite, words and thoughts combine inextricably, 
Such a phenomenon as Shakspere's style, then, may 
well proceed from a cause surprisingly remote from 
conscious intensity of thought ; it may indicate noth- 
ing more than a constitutional habit of mind by which 
words and concepts are instinctively allied with un- 
usual firmness. We all know palpable differences in 
the habitual alliances of word and concept among our 
own friends ; we know, too, that these differences, 
which often make uneducated or thoughtless people 
appear to advantage, are a matter not so much of train- 



64 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

ing, as of temperament. Of course the felicities of 
phrase, and the incidental wisdom, which come from 
such natural marriages of words and concepts are not 
absolutely thoughtless ; but the difference between 
them and the feebler expressions of people whose 
natural style lacks precision is often that while the 
latter involve acute consciousness of thought, the 
former involve little more than alert consciousness 
of phrase. Take care of your words, if your words 
naturally stand for real concepts, and your thoughts 
will take care of themselves. Given such a natural 
habit of mind as this in a healthy human being, given 
too the immense skill in phrase-making which per- 
vaded the literary atmosphere of Shakspere's time, 
given an eager effort on Shakspere's part to make 
phrases which should compare with the best of them, 
and very surely the result you would expect is just 
such a style as distinguishes Venus and Adonis and 
Lucrece. 

To dwell on this trait of style, even at the risk 
of tedium, has been well worth our while. Palpable 
throughout Shakspere's work, it is nowhere more 
easily demonstrable than here, in the poems which 
were clearly the most painstaking productions of 
his early artistic life ; for in the poems, admi- 
rable as they so often are in phrase, one can find 
ultimately little else than admirably conscientious 
phrase-making. Shakspere tells his stories with typi- 
cal Elizabethan ingenuity ; incidentally he infuses 
them with a permeating sense of fact, astonishingly 



VENUS AND AUOXIS, AND LUCRECE 65 

different from the untrammelled imagination of Mar- 
lowe ; yet plausibly, if not certainly, this effect is trace- 
able to the instinctive habit of a mind in which the 
natural alliance of words and concepts was uniquely 
close. Here, then, we have the trait which, above all 
others, defines the artistic individuality of Shakspere. 
To him, beyond any other writer of English, words 
and thoughts seemed naturally identical. 



VI 



THE PLAYS OF SHAKSPERE, FROM TITUS ANDRONI- 
CUS TO THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA 

I. Titus Andronicus 

[A Noble Roman Historye of Tytus Andronicus was entered in 
the Stationers' Register on February 6th, 1593-94. In 1598, Meres 
mentioned Titus Andronicus as among Shakspere's tragedies. The 
play, virtually in its present form, was published in quarto, without 
Shakspere's name, iu 1600. There was another anonymous quarto in 
1611. Besides Meres's allusion to it, the Centurie of Prayse cites two 
others during Shakspere's lifetime, neither of which mentions his 
name. The second of these is in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, 
which appeared in 1614 : " Hee that will sweare Jeronimo 1 or Androni- 
cus are the best playes, yet shall passe unexcepted at, heere, as a man 
whose Judgement shewes it is constant, and hath stood still, these five 
and twentie, or thirtie yeeres." From this, as well as from its general 
archaism, the inference has been drawn that the play belongs, at latest, 
to 1589. As Shakspere was not in London before 1587, then, a rea- 
sonable conjectural date for it is 1588. 

Its precise source is unknown. The story seems to have been 
familiar. Possibly the play, as we have it, is a retouched version of 
an older play called Titus and Vespasian, of which a German adapta- 
tion exists. 

The genuineness of Titus Andronicus has been much questioned, on 
the ground that it is unworthy of Shakspere ; the arguments in its 
favor rest on Meres's allusion, and on the fact that it was included in 
the folio of 1623. If Shakspere's, it is probably his earliest work.] 

The frequent doubt as to the genuineness of Titus 
Andronicus gains color from the place where the 
play is generally printed. In most editions of Shaks- 

1 Le., Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, circ. 1588. 



TITUS ANDRONICUS 67 

pere it occurs between Coriolanus and Romeo and 
Juliet. Thus placed, it seems little more than a mon- 
strous tissue of absurdities, — a thing of which no 1 , 
author who wrote such tragedies as the others could 
conceivably have been guilty. 

Read by itself, however, particularly at a moment 
when one is not prepossessed by Shakspere's greater 
work, it does not seem so bad. Crude as it is in 
general conception and construction, free as it is from 
any vigorous strokes of character, it has, here and 
there, a rhetorical strength and impulse which sweep 
you on unexpectedly. In the opening scene, for ex- 
ample, where Andronicus commits to the tomb the 
bodies of his sons, 1 who have fallen in battle, his half- 
lyric lament has real beauty : — 

" In peace and honour rest you here, my sons ; 
Rome's readiest champions, repose you here in rest, 
Secure from worldly chances and mishaps ! 
Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells, 
Here grow no damned grudges ; here are no storms, 
No noise, but silence and eternal sleep: 
In peace and honour rest you here, my sons ! " 

Or again, when Lavinia is brought to him, maimed 
and ravished, his speech, 2 whoever wrote it, has a 
rude power of its own : — 

" It was my deer ; and he that wounded her 
Hath hurt me more than had he kill'd me dead: 
For now I stand as one upon a rock 
Environ'd with a wilderness of sea, 
Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave, 

1 I. i. 150 seq. " III. i. 91 seq. 



68 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Expecting ever when some envious surge 
Will in his brinish bowels swallow him. 

Had I but seen thy picture in this plight, 
It would have madded me: what shall I do, 
Now I behold thy lively body so 1 
Thou hast no hands, to wipe away thy tears ; 
Nor tongue, to tell me who hath martyr'd thee: 
Thy husband he is dead; and for his death 
Thy brothers are condemn'd, and dead by this. 
Look, Marcus ! ah, son Lucius, look on her ! 
When I did name her brothers, then fresh tears 
Stood on her cheeks, as doth the honey-dew 
Upon a gather'd lily, almost wither'd." 

Whatever else this is, and there is plenty like it in 
Titus Andronicus, it is good, sonorous rant. 

As sonorously ranting, then, whether Shakspere's 
or not, the play is a typical example of English tra- 
gedy at the moment when Shakspere's theatrical life 
began. If, in his earlier months of work, he tried 
his hand at tragedy at all, he certainly must have 
tried it at this kind of thing ; for in substance, as well 
as in style, Titus Andronicus typifies the early Eliza- 
bethan tragedy of blood. The object of this, like 
that of cheap modern newspapers, was to excite crude 
emotion by heaping up physical horrors. The penny 
dreadfuls of our own time preserve the type perenni- 
ally ; something of the sort always persists in theatres 
of the lower sort ; and it is perhaps noteworthy that 
the titles, and in some degree the style, of these mod- 
ern monstrosities preserve one of the most marked 
traits of Elizabethan English, — extravagant allitera- 



TITUS ANDRONICUS 69 

tion. Not only in extravagance of alliterative horrors, 
but also in serene disregard of historic fact, the lower 
literature of our own time preserves the old type. 
Both traits appear, too, in the romantic fancies of 
young children who take to literature. There has 
lately been in existence, for example, an appalling- 
melodrama on the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, writ- 
ten at the age of ten by an American youth, wherein 
Charles IX., Catherine de' Medici, and Coligny figured 
along with a very heroic Adrien de Bourbon, who 
assassinated Charles, and, serenely ascending the 
throne, proceeded to govern France according to 
the liberal principles generally held axiomatic in the 
United States. It took no more liberty with French 
history than Titus Andronieus takes with Roman ; 
and both plays are of the same school. 

In a way, such stuff seems hardly worth serious 
attention. At the very moment to which we have 
attributed Titus Andronieus, however, Marlowe was 
certainly developing the traditional tragedy of blood 
into a form which remains grandly if unequally signifi- 
cant in the Jeio of Malta. Less than twenty years later, 
this same school of literature had produced Hamlet 
and Othello, and King Lear, and Macbeth. Even in 
them, many of its traits persist. Like their crude 
prototypes, they appeal to the taste prevalent in all 
Elizabethan audiences for excessive bloodshed, and 
stentorian rant. Until we understand that there is an 
aspect in which these great tragedies and this grotesque 
Titus Andronieus may rationally be grouped together, 
we shall not understand the Elizabethan theatre. 



70 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Whether Shakspere's or not, then, Titus Andronieus 
deserves a passing glance in any serious study of 
Shakspere. If his, as many of the soundest critics 
are disposed to believe, it deserves more ; for, at least 
in the fact that it differs little from any conventional 
drama of its time, it throws light on his artistic char- 
acter. Marlowe and Shakspere were just of an age. 
The year before that to which we have attributed 
Titus Andronieus, Marlowe had produced in Tambur- 
laine not only a popular play but a great tragic poem ; 
in 1588, he produced another, the Jew of Malta. 
Whatever Marlowe touched, from the beginning, he 
instantly transformed into something better. Shaks- 
pere, meanwhile, if this play be his, contented himself 
with frankly imitative, conventional stage-craft. 

II. Henry VI. 

[The First and Second Parts of Henry VI., together with Titus 
Andronieus, were entered in the Stationers' Register, on April 19th, 1602, 
as transferred from Thomas Millington to Thomas Pavier. There is 
no specific mention of the Third Part until November 8th, 1 623, when it 
was entered for publication in the folio. In their present form, all three 
parts first appeared in the folio of 1623. 

No other version of the First Part is known. The Second Part is 
obviously a version of The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two 
famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, entered on March 12th, 1593-94, 
and published by Millington in the same year. The Third Part is a 
similar version of The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, etc., 
published by Millington in 1595. Both of these quartos were repub- 
lished in 1600. In none of these entries or publications, prior to 1623, 
is there any mention of Shakspere's name. Greene's allusion in 1592 is 
the only contemporary one directly connecting any of these plays with 
Shakspere. Nash, in the same year, alluded to the popularity of 
Talbot on the stage. 



HENRY VI 71 

The question of the authorship of all these plays, as well as of the 
relation of the quartos to the folio, has been much disputed. 1 

The weight of opinion seems to favor the supposition that Greene, 
Peele, Kyd, and Marlowe had a hand in them, and that so far as 
Shakspere touched them it was by way of collaboration, interpolation, 
or revision. 

Whoever wrote them, they are clearly conventional examples of 
Elizabethan chronicle-history, based for the most part on the chroni- 
cles of Holinshed, Hall, and Stowe. Their obvious crudities, as well as 
metrical tests, place them early; a reasonable conjecture might put 
them from 1590 to 1592.] 

Titus Andronieus, we found, whether Shakspere's 
or not, throws light on the dramatic environment in 
which his work began. In Henry VI., which for our 
purposes we may consider as a single play, we shall 
find a similar state of things ; this three-part drama 
certainly makes clear two facts still new to us con- 
cerning the Elizabethan stage. The first is that, at 
least among the earlier playwrights, collaboration was 
habitual ; the second is that chronicle-history — a kind 
of thing which has long been theatrically obsolete — 
is probably the most characteristic type of play pro- 
duced by that stage. These matters we may well 
glance at before attending in detail to Henry VI. 

Collaboration has always been more common in 
dramatic literature than in other kinds. One reason 
for this lies in the obvious difference between a play 
written for acting, and a book or what else addressed 
solely to readers. The author of a book can address 

1 See, for example, Miss J. Lee's paper in the New Shakspere 
Society's Transactions for 1876; and Fleay's discussion in the Life 
and Works, pp. 255-283. 



72 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

his public, with no other intervention than that of 
printers and proof-readers, over whom, if he choose, 
he may exercise constant control. A play, on the 
other hand, can be put before the public, at least 
in the form which the author intends, only by the 
intervention of a number of trained performers ; each 
of them, moreover, must not only intervene in all 
the visible complexity of his own personality, but 
he must furthermore be conditioned in his methods 
of expressing the author's meaning by the elaborate 
physical and mechanical circumstances of a theatre. 
A dramatic author, then, needs not only the equip- 
ment of an ordinary man of letters — grasp of sub- 
ject and mastery of literary style — but also a 
knowledge of the resources and limits of the actual 
stage closely akin to the knowledge of the orchestra 
essential to a skilful composer of music. For this 
reason, few men of letters pure and simple have ever 
succeeded in writing an actable play ; and those who 
have succeeded prove often to have done so only with 
the help of presumably humbler collaborators inti- 
mately familiar with the theatre. 

When any school of dramatic literature is thoroughly 
developed, to be sure, as the Elizabethan drama became 
in Shakspere's time, or as the French has been in our 
own, theatrical people, and literary too, sometimes be- 
came accomplished enough to take the full burden of 
authorship on themselves. Even then, however, — as 
the mere mention of Beaumont and Fletcher, or a 
glance at the collected works of any modern French 



HENRY VI 73 

dramatist, will suggest, — collaboration is at least 
frequent ; while in such an early stage of dramatic 
literature as prevailed when Shakspere's work began, 
collaboration will generally be the rule. 

The stage for which Shakspere wrote, in fact, was 
a true stage, where plays were rated successful in 
accordance with their power of drawing audiences. 
Whoever suggested a touch in a play which should 
increase its power of attraction was welcome to any 
manager; and if four or five men working together 
made a play more attractive than one man working 
by himself, so much the better. As literature, of 
course, the play would probably suffer ; but even to 
this clay no successful manager troubles himself much 
about the merely literary aspect of plays which draw. 
It is more than probable, then, that like any other 
professional playwright of his time Shakspere began 
his work, and learned his trade, either by actual col- 
laboration with more practised men, or by retouching 
plays which for one reason or another they had aban- 
doned. The result of some such process would surely 
resemble Henry VI. 

Just how such collaboration took place or resulted, 
of course, we cannot assert. In a familiar passage of 
Henry VI, however, there is a line which we may rea- 
sonably guess to be an example. Greene, we remem- 
ber, in his Grroatsworth of Wit, strengthened his abuse 
of Shakspere 1 by parodying a line from the tirade of 
the captured Duke of York against the triumphant 

1 See p. 9. 



74 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Queen Margaret. Here is the passage, 1 which occurs 
both in the True Tragedy and in the folio : — 

" Thou art as opposite to every good 
As the Antipodes are unto us, 
Or as the south to the septentrion. 
tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide ! 
How couldst thou drain the life-blood of the child 1 " etc. 

The italicized line was imitated in 1600 by one Nich- 
olson, 2 from which fact, as well as from Greene's 
allusion and its own inherent rant, one may reasonably 
infer that it was thought effective. Now a glance at 
the passage where it occurs will show that the sense 
would be complete without it ; and what is more, that 
the line differs both in concreteness of conception and 
in general sound from the two lines immediately pre- 
ceding, which are much in the manner of Greene 
himself. If Shakspere, touching up an old tirade of 
Greene's, had introduced — for pure ranting effect — 
a stray line of his own, we might have expected just 
such a result as is before us. The example, of course, 
is completely hypothetical ; it will serve, however, to 
suggest what Elizabethan collaboration was. 

Collaborative, beyond doubt, though just where and 
how we can never be sure, Henry VI. is still more 
significant to us as an example of chronicle-history, a 
kind of drama peculiar to the Elizabethan stage. The 
object of chronicle-history distinctly differed from any 
which we now recognize as legitimately theatrical. 

i 3 Henry VI. I. iv. 134-138. 
2 Centurie q/Prayse, 33. 



HENRY VI 75 

The tragedy of blood, as we have seen, was after all 
only an extravagant kind of juvenile sensationalism, 
whose object was to thrill an audience ; the object of 
Elizabethan comedy, to which we shall come later, was 
the perennial object of comedy, — to amuse. The ob- 
ject of chronicle-history, on the other hand, though of 
course even this kind of play had to be incidentally 
interesting, was to teach a generally illiterate public 
the facts of national history. 

As a rule, the lower classes of the time could not 
read. Even when they could, the history of England 
was not conveniently accessible ; it was rather crudely 
digested in certain folio volumes, heavy in every sense 
of the word, and expensive. At the same time, im- 
memorial dramatic traditions which survived from the 
miracle plays made the stage a normal vehicle of 
popular instruction, while the state of public affairs — 
when Mary Stuart was lately beheaded and the Armada 
still more lately dispersed — stimulated patriotic en- 
thusiasm and curiosity. To this demand the theatre re- 
sponded by producing a series of plays, from various 
hands, which together comprised pretty nearly the 
whole of English history. The most familiar of the 
series, of course, are the plays of Shakspere ; but to 
go no further, there were an Edward I. by Peele, an 
admirable Edward II. by Marlowe, and an Edward 
III. sometimes thought Shakspere's own, to prepare 
the way for Richard II. 

Throughout the series — in Shakspere's work as 
elsewhere — the writer of ehronicle-historv conceived 



76 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

his business in a way now foreign to anything theatri- 
cal. He did not trouble himself to compose a play in 
the modern sense of the word ; there was no ques- 
tion of formally developed plot or situation. He 
simply went to Holinshed or some other conventional 
authority, read the narrative sufficiently for his pur- 
poses, selected — with disregard of detail, chronologic 
and other — what seemed to him theatrically effective, 
and translated his selections into blank verse dialogue. 
Incidentally, to be sure, as chronicle-history strength- 
ened, particularly in the hands of Marlowe and Shaks- 
pere, there grew up in it some very vital characters. 
We may best understand Richard III. or Hotspur, how- 
ever, if we realize that, from the dramatist's point of 
view, their very vitality is a part of his effort to trans- 
late into vivid theatrical terms a patriotic story which 
he found in ponderous, lifeless narrative. 

Translation, then, rather than creation, even the most 
serious writer of chronicle-history must have thought 
his task. If he succeeded in translating Holinshed, or 
Hall, or Stowe, into a form which should entertain an 
audience while informing them, he did all he tried to 
do. When we consider the chronicle-histories as origi- 
nally meant to be anything more than translations from 
narrative into presentably dramatic terms, we fail to 
understand them. So much is clear. Less clear, but 
equally true, is the fact that an Elizabethan dramatist 
at work on tragedy, comedy, or romance, really re- 
garded his task as identical with his obvious task when 
he wrote chronicle-history. He never invented his 



HENRY VI 77 

plot, if he could help himself ; except in presenting his 
material more effectively than it had been presented 
by others, he never, for a moment, considered himself 
bound, as modern writers of plays or fiction apparently 
consider themselves bound, to be original. He turned 
to novels, to poems, to stories, to old plays, as directly 
as to chronicles. When he found anything to his pur- 
pose he took it and used it, with as little qualm of 
conscience as a modern man of science would feel in 
availing himself of another's published investigation. 
Whatever the origin of his plot — history, novel, poem, 
story, old play — the dramatist treated it not as a 
creator, but as a translator. 

So to Henry VI As one generally reads it, — after 
Henry V., a chronicle-history far riper in form, — it 
seems grotesquely archaic. Approached by itself, 
however, it proves more powerful than one expects. 
To appreciate it, one must read fast, one must make 
an effort not to notice but to accept the obsolete con- 
ventions of a theatre which, with no more sense of 
oddity than Kingsley felt in making Hypatia speak 
English, compressed into less than eight thousand 
lines of bombastic dialogue forty-nine years of English 
history. After all, these conventions, though obsolete, 
are not actually more absurd than many of our own. 
We can learn, if we will, not only to accept, but to for- 
get them ; and then, by placing ourselves so far as we 
can in the mood of an Elizabethan playgoer, we may 
get even from Henry VI an impression of grand his- 
torical movement. The times the play deals with 



73 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

were stirring and turbulent. Historic forces, of one 
and another kind, were beyond the control of any in- 
dividual; and in Henry VI., after a while, one begins 
to feel them, in all their maddening, tragic confusion. 
One feels, too, one hardly knows how, the lapse of 
time, the growth and the change which years bring. 
Strangely, unexpectedly, one finds even in this crudely 
collaborative old play the stuff of which real history 
is made. 

An accident which helps this effect is that, as a 
mere piece of literature, the Second Part is distinctly 
better than the First, and the Third nearly maintains 
the level of the Second. In the total effect, then, the 
comparative crudity of the First makes it seem long 
past. Even this First Part, though, has a force of its 
own. Take the very opening. After the extremely 
human courtship of Henry V., which closes the pre- 
ceding play, the consecutive and ranting laments 
uttered by four uncles of the infant Henry VI., — 

" Hung be the heavens with black ! " and so on — 

seem very absurd. We must remember, however, that 
they follow the conventions of a stage very different 
from ours, and that Henry V. comes about halfway 
between. If, remembering this, and remembering, 
too, the keen lyric appetite of the Elizabethan public, 
we liken these laments to those of the modern lyric 
stage, we see them in a different light. Sung in con- 
cert, with impressive music, they might still make a 
fine operatic quartette. Then, immediately, the tone 



HENRY VI 79 

of these half-lyric speeches changes. Instantly comes 
the discord of quarrel,— a quarrel which is to end, after 
half a century of bloodshed, in the death of the un- 
happy Henry. This example typifies a fact which we 
must keep constantly in mind. At least in its earlier 
period, the Elizabethan stage tried constantly to pro- 
duce, by purely dramatic means, effects which would 
now be reserved for the opera. Without understand- 
ing this, we cannot quite understand what a play like 
Henry VI. means. Appreciating the operatic nature 
of the ranting declamation throughout, and of such 
half-lyric passages as this opening quartette, we can 
begin to feel what power the play has. 

In the Second Part, for all its neglect of the great 
dramatic possibilities inherent in the adulterous love 
of Suffolk and the Queen, there are two passages better 
than anything in the others. Both of these, in the 
folio version, seem at least Shaksperean, if not cer- 
tainly Shakspere's. The first is the death-scene of 
Cardinal Beaufort ; the second is the rebellion of Jack 
Cade. 

In the death-scene 1 we have a wonderfully vivid 
picture of dying delirium, from which we would not 
spare a word. In the Contention there is a mere 
sketch of it, which would seem wholly like a careless 
abridgment but for the change in a single line. In 
the Contention, the speech which stands for the famous 

" Comb down his hair; look, look ! it stands upright, 
Like lime-twigs set to catch my winged soul," etc., 

i 2 Henry VI. III. iii. 



80 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

is followed directly by a speech of Salisbury, — 

" See, how the pangs of death do gripe his heart." 

In the folio, Beaufort's delirium is followed by a fer- 
vent prayer for him by the King, who is interrupted 
by Salisbury thus : — 

" See, how the pangs of death do make him grin ! " 

That change — from "do gripe his heart" to "do 
make him grin " — may not be a deliberate change by 
Shakspere's hand, but surely nothing could be more 
like one. It has just the added concreteness of phrase, 
just the enormous gain in vividness, which distin- 
guishes his style from any other. 

Shaksperean, too, seem all the Cade scenes, 1 though 
clearly they existed in the Contention, and doubtless 
those that played your clowns spoke more than was 
set down for them. Though it be virtually in the 
Contention, however, the reasoning of the rioter who 
maintains Cade to be a legitimate Mortimer seems too 
like Shakspere's fun not to be his. Cade, we remem- 
ber, declared that his princely father had been stolen 
in infancy and apprenticed to a bricklayer : the rioter 
confirms him 2 : — 

" Sir, he made a chimney in my father's house, and 
the bricks are alive at this day to testify it ; therefore deny 
it not." 

What makes the scenes seem Shaksperean, however, 
is not so much any matter of detail as the general 

1 2 Henry VI. IV ii.-viii. 2 2 Henry VI IV. ii. 156. 



HENRY VI 81 

temper which pervades them. Cade's mob, though far 
mure lightly treated, is essentially the mob of Julius 
Ccesar and of Coriolanus. In an earlier, simpler form, 
it expresses what by and by we shall see to be a dis- 
tinct trait of Shakspere. His personal convictions, 
of course, we can never know ; as an artist, however, 
he was consistent throughout in his contempt — here 
laughing, but later serious — for the headless rabble : 
wherefore, very properly, Shakspere is nowadays taken 
to task by virtuous critics of a democratic turn. 

In the Third Part of Henry VI there are no passages 
so indubitably effective as those at which we have just 
glanced. As one reads the play hastily, however, 
one feels in it more than in the two others a definite 
tendency. From the opening quartette of lament 
breaking into discord, the First Part and the Second 
have been full of turbulent, confused disintegration. 
Here at last, in the Third Part, things good and evil, 
order and chaos, begin at last to range themselves ; 
and slowly but surely defining itself as the embodi- 
ment of all the evil, we feel the personality of Gloster. 
The Third Part of Henry VI. tends straight to Richard 
III. In the Richard III. of our modern stage, indeed, 
some of the earlier scenes are actually taken directly 
from Henry VI. 

Our discussion of Richard III, however, must come 
later. For our present purposes we have traced the 
early chronicle-history far enough. Whatever part 
Shakspere had in Henry VI, we have found the 
play, like Titus Andronicus, suggestive of the en- 



82 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

vironment in which Shakspere's work began. It has 
helped, then, to define our notion of the Elizabethan 
stage. Essentially collaborative rather than individual, 
frankly translative rather than creative in method, 
designed quite as much to inform as to divert, often 
more than half lyric in mood, the chronicle-history 
is the most typical kind of Elizabethan drama. As- 
suming its conventions, we may find in Henry VI. 
much that is permanently admirable, and some touches 
which seem too good for any hand but Shakspere's. 
What part he had in it, however, must remain doubt- 
ful. The real light it surely throws on his individu- 
ality amounts only to this : like Titus Andronicus, 
if either play be in any degree genuine, it shows him 
in his beginning frankly imitative and conventional. 
His work is the work of a man patiently mastering 
the technicalities of his art, not of one who instantly 
impresses whatever he touches with that trait now- 
adays so much admired, — originality. 



III. Love's Labour's Lost. 

[Love's Labour's Lost was published in quarto, in 1598. On the title- 
page we are informed that this version was "presented before her 
Highness this last Christmas," and is " newly corrected and augmented 
by W. Shakespere." It is mentioned by Meres; and the Centime of 
Prayse cites a slightly doubtful allusion to it in 1594. The source of 
the plot is unknown. The weight of opinion makes this the earliest 
play unquestionably assigned to Shakspere. It is conjectured from 
internal evidence to have been written as early as 1589 or 1590, but to 
have been revised in 1597 for the performance at court mentioned on 
the titlepage.] 



LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST 83 

In its present form, Love's Labour's Lost is puzzling. 
There seems no reasonable doubt that it is a very 
early play, carefully revised for performance at court 
at a time when Shakspere had completely mastered 
his art. Just what is old in it and what new we have 
no certain' means of judging; yet for our study of 
Shakspere's development we wish to consider not the 
revised play, but the original. While of course we 
can never be sure, however, we may reasonably guess 
that the correction and augmentation of 1597 was 
chiefly a matter of mere style, — a conclusion in which 
we are supported by the fact that out of some 1600 lines 
of verse nearly 1100 are rhymed. The shallowness of 
character throughout, too, and the obviously excessive 
ingenuity of plot and situation, as well as of phrase, 
are unlike Shakspere's later work. Assuming, then, 
that in general character Love's Labour 's Lost is con- 
temporary with the First Part of Henry VL., but that 
in detail it is often seven or eight years later, we are 
warranted, for the moment, in neglecting matters of 
detail, and in considering the play very generally. 

Thus considered, it groups itself immediately with 
Titus Andronicus and Henry VL. Disregarding the 
mere matter of style, — where Shakspere's concreteness 
of phrase appears throughout., — we find it essentially 
not an original work, but a vigorous comedy in the 
then fashionable manner of John Lyly. Lyly's come- 
dies, and this too, are really dramatic phases of the 
Renascent mood which started, not in the translations 
of Surrey, but in the Sonnets of Wyatt. Beginning 
with a powerful effort to civilize the forms of a bar- 



84 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

barous language, this movement, in little more than 
fifty years, had resulted in a literature which at once 
stimulated and gratified an insatiable appetite for 
graceful verbal novelty. In Love's Labour 's Lost we 
have a capital example of this, running now and again 
into frank, good-natured burlesque of itself. Graceful 
as they are, these frothy, overwrought fantasies of 
phrase and character are nowadays puzzling; it is 
hard to realize quite how they could ever have been 
popular on the stage. 

To appreciate this, we may conveniently recall a 
fact we detected in Henry VI. What seemed there mere 
bombast took on another aspect when we considered 
it not as primarily dramatic, but rather as operatic. 
On the Elizabethan stage, we found, mere turns of 
language and half-lyric cadences were conventionally 
used to express moods which in our own time would 
certainly prefer the completely lyric form of operatic 
compositions. Looked at in this light, Love's Labour 's 
Lost grows more intelligible. In conception and in 
style alike, it expresses a state of artistic feeling 
which would now express itself in polite comic opera ; 
its endless rhymes and metrical oddities, its quips 
and cranks, are really not theatrical at all ; like 
Lyly's over-ingenious turns of phrase, they are the 
airs, the duets, the trios, the concerted pieces of a 
stage not yet fully operatic only for want of adequate 
development in the art of music. Nor is Love's La- 
bour 's Lost operatic only in detail : like modern comic 
opera, such essentially lyric work as this has no pro- 
found meaning ; its object is just to delight, to amuse ; 



LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST 85 

whoever searches for significance in such literature 
misunderstands it. 

The excessive ingenuity of Love's Labour's Lost, 
which often makes it hard to read, makes it all the 
more worth the attention of whoever should minutely 
study Elizabethan style. The scope with which, in its 
final form, it at once exemplifies and burlesques the 
literary fashions and affectations of its day, is astonish- 
ing. The deliberate euphuism of Armado, 1 the son- 
neteering of the King and his courtiers, 2 the pedantry 
of the schoolmaster and the curate, 3 the repartee of 
the Princess and her ladies, 4 the pertness of the boy 
Moth, 5 the blunders of the clowns, 6 the outworn, but at 
the time not yet outstripped conventions of the Masque 
of the Worthies, 7 the permanent freshness of the clos- 
ing song, the lyric ingenuity of every page, — all 
these, in their bewildering confusion, typically express 
the temper of a time when whoever wanted amuse- 
ment was most amused by verbal novelty. Through- 
out, too, one can at last begin to realize how the ears 
of Elizabethan audiences were as eagerly sensitive to 
fresh, graceful, ingenious turns of phrase as modern 
ears are to catching melodies ; and fresh turns of 
phrase Shakespere gave them here, to their heart's 
content, — now in contented conventional serious- 
ness, the next minute in a frank, good-natured burst 
of burlesque, — ■ with a paradoxical comprehensiveness 
thoroughly, if still superficially, individual. 

1 E.g. I. i. 232 seq. 2 IV. iii. 2G, GO, 101. 3 E.g. V. i. 

i E.g. V. ii. 1-78. 5 E.g. I. ii. 6 E.g. I. i. 182 seq. 

7 V. ii. 523 seq. 



86 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

From all this, one would naturally expect Love's 
Labour 's Lost to be far from amusing on the modern 
stage. Within a few years, however, it has been 
acted with considerable success. The secret of vital- 
ity like this is not to be found in such matters as 
we have glanced at; it must be sought in something 
not merely contemporary, but of more permanent 
dramatic value. Several things of this kind are soon 
perceptible. In the first place, the play has an open- 
air atmosphere of its own, a bit conventional, to be 
sure, but romantic and sustained ; you feel through- 
out that what is going on takes place in just the sort 
of world where it belongs. In the second place, there 
are various perennially effective situations, such as the 
elaborate concealment and eavesdropping by which 
the King and his lords discover that they have all 
fallen from their high resolves in common ; 1 and 
more notably still such as the elaborate confusion of 
identity, when the Princess and her ladies mask them- 
selves to bewilder their disguised lovers. 2 In the 
third place, the elaborate repartee of the dialogue, 
particularly in the passages which make Biron and 
Rosaline so suggestive of Benedick and Beatrice, 
though very verbal, is very sparkling. 3 In the fourth 
place, the elaborate introduction of a play within a 
play, 4 broadly burlesquing a kind of literature which 
was passing out of fashion, must always have been 

1 IV. iii. 1-210. 

2 V. ii. 158-265. 

3 See II. i. 114-128; and cf. Much Ado, I. i. 117-146. 
* V. ii. 523-735. 



LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST 87 

diverting, if only by way of contrast. Finally, to go 
no further, the contrast of clowns and courtiers in 
this very scene emphasizes what pervades the play, — 
constant caricature of contemporary absurdity along 
with frequent serious perpetration of the like. 

To specify these details has been worth while, 
because, as we shall see later, they constantly reappear 
in the later work of Shakspere, who is remarkable 
among dramatists for persistent repetition of whatever 
has once proved dramatically effective. We might 
have specified more such detail ; we might have studied 
Love's Labour 's Lost far more profoundly, denning 
the various affectations it commits or satirizes, dis- 
cussing whether this part of it or that was meant for 
a personal attack on a rival company, and so on. 
For our purposes, however, we have touched on the 
play sufficiently. Contemporary, in a general way, 
with Titus Andronicus and Henry VI., and — per- 
haps because so palpably corrected and augmented 

— vastly better than either of them, it groups itself 
with them in our view of Shakspere as an artist. 
When he began to write, comedy was more highly de- 
veloped than tragedy or history. His first comedy, 
then, was more ripe than his first work of other kinds ; 
but like them it may be regarded, in the end, as a 
successful experiment in the best manner of his time, 

— not as a new contribution to dramatic literature. 



WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 



IV. The Comedy op Errors. 

[At Christmas time, 1594, a "Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus 
his Menechmus) " was played at Gray's Inn. Meres, in 1598, men- 
tioned Errors among the comedies of Shakspere. The play was first 
entered in 1623, and published in the folio. 

Its source is clearly the Menechmi of Plautus, probably in some 
translation, and one or two scenes from his Amphitryon. Modern 
critics generally agree in placing it, on internal evidence, before 1591, 
with a slight preference for 1589 1 or 1590.] 

In the three plays we have considered, assuming 
them to be at least partly Shakspere's, we found 
him, in his earliest dramatic work, by no means origi- 
nal. Instead of trying to do something new, he 
devoted himself to writing a tragedy of blood much in 
the manner of Kyd or Marlowe, to collaborating in 
a conventional chronicle-history in which various 
contemporary manners appear, and to making a 
comedy in the manner of Lyly. If we try to charac- 
terize this work by a single word, we can hardly find 
a better term than experimental. 

As apparently an experiment, the Comedy of Errors, 
like the play we shall consider next, groups itself with 
what precede. Like the next play, however, — the 
Two Gentlemen of Verona, — it differs from the others 
in not imitating any one else. The first three experi- 
ments seem unpretentiously imitative ; the two follow- 
ing seem independent. 

1 1589 is the latest year in which the allusion to France "making 
war against her heir — " III. ii. 127 — would have been literally 
true. 



THE COMEDY OF ERRORS 89 

Clearly enough, the Comedy of Errors attempts 
to adapt for the Elizabethan stage — to translate into 
contemporary theatrical terms — a classic comedy. In 
a way, the effort is akin to that of the poems, which, 
as we saw, exemplified the phase of Renascent feeling 
which delighted not so much in the formal graces of 
foreign culture as in the humane spirit of ancient 
literature. While in the poems, however, Shakspere 
altered and adapted Ovid or whom else, with excessive 
verbal care, to the taste of the literary public, he 
altered Plautus, in the Comedy of Errors, for purely 
theatrical purposes. The resulting contrast is curious. 
The poems, in their own day far more reputable litera- 
ture than any contemporary plays, became, from the 
very concreteness of their detail, rather more cor- 
rupt in effect than the originals from which they 
were drawn. At all events, they carry that sort of 
thing as far as it can tolerably go ; for throughout, 
while dealing with matters which demand pagan 
unconsciousness, they are studiously conscious. The 
Comedy of Errors, on the other hand, — in its own 
day a purely theatrical affair, — ■ Shakspere altered in 
a way which the most prim modern principles would 
unhesitatingly pronounce for the better. In Plau- 
tus, for example, the episode of the courtesan and 
the chain is frankly licentious ; in Shakspere, it is so 
different 1 that without a reference to Plautus one can 
hardly make out why the lady in question is called a 
courtesan at all. This trait we shall find to be gen- 

1 III. ii. 169 seq. ; IV. i., iii. 



90 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

erally characteristic of Shakspere. Always a man of 
his time, to be sure, he never lets the notion of pro- 
priety stand between him and an effective point ; when 
there is nothing to prevent, however, he is decent; 
among his contemporaries, he is remarkable for refine- 
ment of taste. 

This incidental refinement of plot is by no means 
his only addition to the material of Plautus. The 
second Dromio is Shakspere's, so is the conventional 
pathos of iEgeon, so the effort to contrast the shrewish 
Adriana with her gentler sister. The very mention 
of these characters, however, calls our attention to 
the most obvious weakness of the Comedy of Errors. 
Except for conventional dramatic purposes, the char- 
acters throughout are little more than names ; they 
are not seriously individualized. A convenient rhe- 
torical scheme of criticism sometimes states the prin- 
ciple that any story or play must have a plot, — the 
actions or events it deals with ; and that as actions 
or events must be performed by somebody, or happen 
to somebody, somewhere, any play or novel must also 
include characters and descriptions. A theoretically 
excellent play, then, consists of an interesting plot, 
which involves individual characters, in a distinct 
local atmosphere. Applying this test to the Comedy 
of Errors, we find a remarkably ingenious and well- 
constructed plot, and little else. Characters and 
background might be anybody and anywhere. 

As a piece of untrammelled construction, as a plot 
put together with what seems almost wilful disregard 






THE COMEDY OF ERRORS 91 

of other complications, the Comedy of Errors most 
clearly shows itself experimental. In construction, to 
be sure, the play is theatrically as successful as any 
in the Elizabethan drama. Indeed, it sometimes ap- 
proaches the niceties of the classic tradition ; hardly 
anything else in Shakspere so nearly observes the 
unities. When we have sufficiently admired its con- 
struction, however, and the general ease and. smooth- 
ness of its style, we have nearly exhausted, it. 
Shakspere, in his mature years, is not so soon ex- 
haustible. This very fact, apart from other evidence, 
would make us guess the Comedy of Errors to come 
early among his writings. 

In the plot thus carefully composed, there are at 
least two features worth our notice. The first, at 
which we need merely glance, is the vigorous effect 
of dramatic contrast produced by beginning this pro- 
longed farce with the romantic narrative of iEgeon's 
shipwreck and misfortunes and wanderings, and by 
ending it with the still more romantic discovery that 
the Abbess of Ephesus is the long-lost wife whom he 
has so faithfully mourned. The second, on which we 
may dwell a little longer, is the fundamental source 
of all the fun and trouble, — the elaborate, double 
confusion of identity. Confusion of identity, we 
remember, was one of the effective stage devices in 
Love's Labour 's Lost ; but there it was merely a bit of 
episodic masking. Here it is the very essence of the 
plot. It is taken, of course, straight from Plautus ; 
it remains effective in extravagant acting to this day. 



92 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Nowadays, however, and just as much in Shakspere's 
time, it could never have been plausible. In so ex- 
travagant a form as that in which we here find it, 
nothing could make it plausible except the actual con- 
ventions of the classic stage. There, we remember, 
the actors wore masks. Mask two of them alike, and 
no eye could tell at a glance which was which. No 
" make-up " on any modern stage which reveals human 
features, however, could possibly make two people 
look enough alike to warrant such theatrically effec- 
tive confusion of identity as pervades the Comedy of 
Errors. 



V. The Two Gentlemen op Verona. 

[The Two Gentlemen of Verona was mentioned by Meres in 1598. 
Beyond a stray allusion in 1615 to making "a virtue of necessity," 1 
there seems to be no other extant notice of it until its publication in 
the folio of 1623. 

Its source is some English version of the Diana of Montemayor, a 
Portuguese poet. 

On internal evidence modern critics generally agree in placing it 
early, — from 1591 to 1593 or so.] 

Like all the plays we have considered so far, the 
Two Gentlemen of Verona seems experimental ; like 
the Comedy of Errors, it is not imitative, but inde- 
pendent, and its experimental effect is caused chiefly 
by the abnormal development of one essential feature, 
to the neglect of the other two. Here the resemblance 

i IV. i. 62. 



THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA 93 

ends. The essential feature abnormally developed in 
the Two Gentlemen of Verona is not the plot, but the 
characters. More than what precede, then, this play 
tends straight toward the unmistakably greater work 
to come. 

At bottom, like all the rest, it is a dramatic version 
of narrative material. The kind of narrative here 
chosen for this translation is akin to what probably 
gave rise to Love's Labour's Lost. Substantially, both 
of these plays, like most of the following, amount to 
little more than such stories as are familiar in the 
Decameron and its numerous polyglot descendants. 
At least in English, the old translators of such fic- 
tion pretended, with true British cant, to didactic 
purpose. 1 Clearly, however, their real purpose was 
to amuse ; and their efforts took the form of such 
unadorned plots as to-day suffice to stimulate the 
imagination of children, and sufficed three hundred 
years ago to stimulate anybody's. When translating 
such narrative into dramatic terms, then, a play- 
wright found his attention centred elsewhere than 
when he was similarly translating chronicle-history. 
In that case, he was bound, while interesting his 
audience, to instruct them ; for, after all, they received 
chronicle-histories rather in the mood of thoughtless 
students than in that of theatre-goers. The old 
chronicles, too, contained a great deal more matter 
than a dramatist could possibly use. With Italian 
novels the case was different. Often they were so 

1 See the Introduction to Paynter's Palace of Pleasure. 



94 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

short as to need rather amplification than condensa- 
tion. The dramatist, then, was forced to invent 
something; and here, as much as when dealing 
with classic comedy, his object, like that of his 
original, was to be as entertaining as he could. 

With such an object, we have seen, Shakspere 
experimentally introduced new factors into the plot 
of the Comedy of Errors, handling the plot throughout 
as carefully as he handled the verses of his poems. 
In the Two Gentlemen of Verona he let his plot take 
care of itself ; but, without apparently conceiving his 
characters as very consistently individual, he enlivened 
them throughout, and thus incidentally gave their 
surroundings some definite atmosphere, by adding to 
the bare outline of his plot any number of subtle 
touches based on observation of real life. 

These touches of character, which make you feel 
at any given moment as if these people were real, 
pervade the play. Typical ones may be found in the 
first scene between Julia and Lucetta, 1 so frankly 
repeated and improved in the Merchant of Venice ; 2 
in the mission of the disguised Julia to Sylvia, 3 so 
admirably improved in Twelfth Night;* and in the 
less beautiful but perhaps more final episode of 
Launce and his dog. 5 They are not only true to life ; 
the observation, the temper, they imply has a distinct 
character of its own, — a character which anybody 

i I. ii. 2 I. ii. 

3 IV. iv. 113 seq. 4 I. v. 178 seq. 

5 ILiii • IV. iv. 



THE TWO GENTLEMEN OE VERONA 95 

familiar with the ripe work of Shakspere knows, 
without knowing why, to be peculiar to him. Here, 
at last, then, in the experimental detail of a roman- 
tic comedy, Shakspere first shows himself original. 
The vitality of detail in the Two Gentlemen of Verona 
gives it a vigor of effect previously unknown to the 
English stage. 

This vigor of effect, however, is not so obvious as 
it would have been if Shakspere, in his later work, 
had been less economical of invention. Economy of 
invention — perhaps another name for professional 
prudence — made him more apt than almost any 
other known writer to use again and again de- 
vices which had once proved effective. Among 
mendacious proverbs, few are so completely false as 
that which declares Shakspere never to repeat ; it 
were truer to say that he rarely did much else if he 
could help it. Whatever is notable in the Two Gen- 
tlemen of Verona, then, appeared later, and more 
effectively, in his more mature work. To people 
familiar with that mature work, this earlier version 
of its excellences must generally seem thin and 
weak. Considered where we have placed it, however, 
— after what has preceded, before what is to come, — 
it still produces an effect of great vitality. 

There are two or three situations, also, which, when 
new, must have been effective on the stage. Per- 
haps the most effective of these come from Julia's 
disguising herself as a boy, 1 — a device which, as w r e 

1 II. vii. ; IV. ii., iv. ; V. iv. 



96 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

have seen, must have been convenient in a theatre 
where female parts were played by boys, then, as now, 
not habituated to skirts. Less palpably effective, but 
still unquestionably so, are the scenes where Proteus 
plays false to Valentine. 1 The more one considers the 
fresh detail of this play, the cleverer it seems. 

Detail once admired, however, the Two Gentlemen 
of Verona is by no means masterly. Not only is the 
plot hastily and clumsily put together, and therefore 
far from plausible, but the characters themselves are 
not generally conceived as consistent individuals. 
Their vitality is a matter of detail. Ethically they 
are incomplete, out of scale. From all this results 
an effect which, even in its own day, must have been 
unsatisfactory. At the end, our sympathy is clearly 
expected to be with both gentlemen, who are duly 
rewarded with such brides as romantic tradition ex- 
pects them to live happily with ever after. In fact, 
we cannot sympathize with either of them. Proteus 
has behaved too outrageously to be rewarded at all ; 
there is no reason for his change of heart ; and there 
is no excuse for the conventional magnanimity of 
Valentine. For all its merits, the Two Gentlemen of 
Verona remains in total effect unplausible, experi- 
mental, artistically unsatisfactory. 

1 II. iv. 100 seq. ; II. vi. ; III. i., ii. ; IV. ii. etc. 



SHAKSPERE ABOUT 1593 97 



VI. Shakspere about 1593. 

Uncertain as our chronology must be, we may feel 
tolerably assured that, whatever their actual dates, 
and whatever subsequent revision they may have had, 
the works now before us were substantially finished 
by 1593. With one or two possible exceptions, 
furthermore, and exceptions which hardly alter the 
general case, we may fairly assume that in 1593 Shaks- 
pere had accomplished little more. It is worth while, 
then, to pause for a moment, and define our impres- 
sion of him at that time. Venus and Adonis, we 
remember, was published in that year, just about his 
twenty-ninth birthday. This first serious publication 
may fairly be counted an epoch in his career. 

In the course of six years at most, — the years from 
twenty-three to twenty-nine, — he had certainly suc- 
ceeded in establishing himself as an actor, in writing, 
wholly or in part, at least seven noteworthy plays 
which have survived, and in composing at least one 
poem, of the highest contemporary fashion, which not 
only succeeded in public, but attracted to him the 
friendly patronage of a great nobleman. When we 
stop to consider how much, even of the works we 
have now touched on, has remained in permanent lit- 
erature, the achievement seems astounding. 

When we turn to consider what English literature 
had otherwise produced meantime, however, we find a 
state of things almost ecmally notable. In 1587, we 
7 



98 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

have seen, Elizabethan literature, as we now know it, 
hardly existed. In 1588 1 the "Martin Marprelate " 
controversy began. In 1589 came the first publications 
of Bacon and of Nash, and the first volume of Hak- 
luyt's Voyages. In 1590 appeared Tamburlaine, the 
first publication of Marlowe ; the Arcadia, the first of 
Sidney ; and the first three books of Spenser's Faerie 
Queene. In 1591 came the first publications of Dray- 
ton and of Ralegh, Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, and 
two volumes of minor verse by Spenser. In 1592, 
along with publications by Constable, Greene, Gabriel 
Harvey, Lyly, Marlowe, and Nash, came Daniel's first 
publication, — the Sonnets to Delia. By 1593, then, 
Elizabethan literature was well under way ; the period 
since 1587 had been one of unprecedented literary 
fertility. 

The mental activity displayed in the early work of 
Shakspere, then, was a more normal fact than it would 
have been during almost any other six years of Eng- 
lish history. During the same six years, too, Mar- 
lowe, who was just Shakspere's age, had been almost 
equally active. In 1593 he was killed. Except 
Shakspere, he proves, on the whole, the most notable 
literary figure of his day. By comparing his work, 
then, with the work which Shakspere accomplished 
during his lifetime we may most conveniently define 
our impression of Shakspere himself. 

Tamburlaine, Marlowe's first extant play, is believed 

1 All notes of publication in this study are taken from Ryland's 

Chronological Outlines of English Literature : Macmillan : 1890. 



SHAKSPERE ABOUT 1593 99 

to have been acted in 1587, when he was twenty-four 
years old. It was followed by a Second Part, analo- 
gous to the Second Part of Henry VI, by Dr. Faustus, 
by the Jew of Malta, and by Edward II. There is a 
fragment, too, of a play on the Massacre at Paris 
(S. Bartholomew), and of another on Dido, as well as 
a series of very loose translations from Ovid, and the 
Hero and Leander which we have already considered. 
Doubtless, too, Marlowe had a hand in other plays, — 
perhaps in Henry VI. and Richard III. The works 
we have mentioned, however, undoubtedly his, are 
enough for our purpose. 

Putting aside Hero and Leander, to which we have 
given attention enough, we see at once that Marlowe's 
completed work consisted of four blank-verse trage- 
dies. In all of these the plots are not very carefully 
composed, the characters — though broadly conceived 
— are not minutely individualized, and the general 
atmosphere is one of indefinite grandeur. In all four 
there are many passages full of noble, surging imagina- 
tion ; and many more which seem inferior. Yet the 
total effect of any one of these tragedies, still more 
the total effect of all four, is among the most im- 
pressive in English literature. From the beginning, 
Marlowe, as an artist, was passionately sensitive to 
the eternal tragedy which lies in the conflict between 
human aspiration and the inexorable limit of human 
achievement. In Tamburlaine this passionate sense 
of truth is expressed in terms of a material struggle ; 
in Faustus the struggle is spiritual ; in the Jew of 



100 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Malta it is racial ; in Edward II it is personal. 
Whether the struggle be with the limits of the con- 
querable earth, however, or with those of human 
knowledge, or with those of ancestral inheritance, or 
with our own warring selves, the struggle is forever 
the same. We would be other than we are ; other 
than we are, we may not be. In all four of Marlowe's 
tragedies that great, true note vibrates. Knowingly 
or not, Marlowe expressed himself greatly. Dead in 
degradation before he was thirty years old, he must 
always remain a great poet. 

In turning from this work to Shakspere's, we are 
instantly aware of a marked contrast, not wholly to 
Shakspere's advantage. If all four of Marlowe's trage- 
dies expressed but one profound sense of truth, at least 
they expressed that one tragic fact in lastingly noble 
terms. So far, on the other hand, Shakspere's tragedy, 
and history, and comedy has expressed nothing more 
serious than is expressed in his poems, — a flexible 
eagerness to adapt himself to the popular taste. Ex- 
perimental we have called his plays, and the word will 
equally apply to his poems. Clearly the first six years 
of Shakspere's work indicate no profound perception, 
no serious artistic purpose. 

When we consider Shakspere's experiments, how- 
ever, ranging over these first six years of his pro- 
fessional life, we are presently impressed by the 
fact that no two of them are alike. One is a 
tragedy of blood, one is a chronicle-history, one is a 
fantastic comedy after the manner of Lyly, one is 



SHAKSPERE ABOUT 1593 101 

something resembling a pseudo-classic comedy, one is a 
kind of romantic comedy which later Shakspere made 
peculiarly his own, one is a fashionable erotic poem. 
Clearly another trait besides lack of serious artistic 
purpose distinguishes him from Marlowe ; in view 
of the comparative excellence of all these works, it 
would lie hard to find a more excellent versatility than 
Shakspere's. 

In our study of his poems, we dwelt enough on the 
peculiarly concrete habit of thought which marked 
him ; we assured ourselves that in his mind words so 
naturally stood for real concepts, that by merely play- 
ing with words he played unwittingly with thoughts, 
too. His notable versatility proves to be a second 
trait as marked and as permanent. In neither is there 
so far a trace of conscious originality, such as one 
feels must surely have underlain the passionate phi- 
losophy of Marlowe. Yet, in the Two Gentlemen of 
Verona we found Shakspere at last as freshly original 
as he had already been versatile. The originality there 
displayed, however, was not a matter of philosophy, 
not of generalization, not of wisdom. It was an origi- 
nality of observation, and of humanly concrete state- 
ment; what he did was only to try a new theatrical 
experiment, — to introduce into popular comedy gleams 
of real human life hitherto unknown there. This 
originality seems only half-conscious ; it seems simply 
the experimental adaptation to his professional work 
of what he had learned by actual experience of life ; as 
such, it would very likely have seemed to him almost 
accidental. 



102 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

In three ways, then, although his accomplishment 
was not yet permanently great, Shakspere's power 
had displayed itself by 1593. In the first place, his 
mind was so made that words and concepts seemed 
one, and so his verbal gymnastics proved unwittingly 
wise ; in the second place, whatever he turned his 
hand to he did as well as the next man, and he turned 
his hand to everything ; in the third place, in experi- 
menting with comedy he had stumbled on the fact and 
the use of his own great faculty of observation. None 
of these traits, however, are showy, none of the kind 
which either require or command instant recognition. 
To Shakspere, we may guess, they may well have 
seemed humdrum ; and these six years little else than 
a prolonged apprenticeship. He had learned his trade ; 
apart from this, he would probably have thought that 
he had accomplished nothing. 



VII 



THE PLAYS OF SHAKSPERE, FROM A MIDSUMMER 
NIGHT'S DREAM TO TWELFTH NIGHT 

I. 

As the general uncertainty of our chronology must 
indicate, the separation of some plays in this chapter 
from those in the last is arbitrary. Its justification 
must rest chiefly on two facts which broadly distin- 
guish the groups : In the first place, while the interest 
of the preceding plays is chiefly historical, the interest 
of those to -come remains intrinsic; apart from any 
historical conditions they are often in themselves de- 
lightful. In the second place, while in the preceding- 
plays one finds at bottom hardly anything more signi- 
ficant than versatile technical experiment, one finds 
throughout those to come constant indications of 
growing, spontaneous, creative imagination. 

In an artist of whatever kind, a period of vigorous 
creative imagination declares itself after a fashion 
which people who are not of artistic temperament 
rarely understand. The artist docs not feel that he 
has something definite to say, — that he has a state- 
ment to make ; but when he is about his work, or 
perhaps before, lie is constantly aware of a haunting 
mood which will not let him rest until he has some- 



104 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

how expressed it. What that mood signifies in the 
scheme of the eternities he may as likely as not neither 
know nor care. All he need certainly know is that, 
without being able to tell why, he feels somehow with 
painful acuteness ; what he cares for is chiefly to 
express his feeling in such manner as shall get rid of 
it. If he be a man of genius, his work under these 
conditions will be of lasting value ; if not, it may be 
comically insignificant. To the artist, this is a matter 
of accident : to himself a man of genius is as common- 
place as a plough-boy. The thing for us to remark, 
then, in this chapter and in the two following, is that 
throughout, to greater or less degree, the plays and 
the poems seem born of true artistic impulse, of that 
trait, uncomfortable to great folk and small, which at 
times, to any artistic temperament, makes the legends 
of inspiration seem almost credible. 

As generally of lasting artistic value, then, — as 
palpably works of genius, — the writings to come must 
be read in a different mood from those which pre- 
cede. To understand them we must not only train 
ourselves to appreciate how they impressed Eliza- 
bethans three hundred years ago ; we must actually 
enjoy them ourselves. So essential is this, indeed, 
and so great the lasting enjoyment which, as we 
know them better, we may find throughout them, that 
in many moods to busy ourselves with them further 
seems wasted time, — worse still, it often seems like 
pedantic blindness to the constant delights which 
alone have made them permanent. In the end, how- 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 105 

ever, if we assume in ourselves the full power of 
enjoyment, of artistic appreciation, and if we test it 
now and again by reading for pure pleasure the works 
which in our coming study we must discuss, we shall 
gain from our discussion the only thing which could 
really justify it, — an increased power of enjoyment. 
These general facts are nowhere clearer than in the 
Mid sin inner Night's Dream. 



II. A Midsummer Night's Dream. 

[The Midsummer Night's Dream was entered in the Stationers* 
Register on October 8th, 1600. During the same year it was twice 
published in quarto, with Shakspere's name. It was mentioned by- 
Meres, in 1598. 

The sources, none of them closely followed, are many and various. 
Among them are probably the life of Theseus in North's Plutarch ; 
Chaucer's Knight's Tale, Wife of Bath's Tale, and Legend of Good 
Women ; and perhaps Golding's Ovid. The fairy scenes have obvious 
relation to the actual folk-lore of the English peasantry. Besides, the 
sources of both the Corned// of Errors and the Two Gentlemen of Verona 
probably affect this play, too. 

Conjectures as to the origin and date of the Midsummer Night's 
Dream vary. Some hold that the play was made, like Milton's Comus, 
for a wedding festival. The conjectures as to date, based on internal 
evidence, — verse-tests and allusions, — vai-y from 1590 to 1595, with a 
slight preference for 1594] 

The first, constant, and last effect of the Mid- 
summer NigMs Dream is one of poetry so pervasive 
that one feels brutally insensitive in seeking here 
anything but delight. Nowhere does Shakspere more 
fully justify Milton's words : * — 

i L' Allegro. 



106 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

" Then to the well- trod stage anon, 
If Jonson's learned sock be on, 
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, 
Warble his native wood-notes wild." 

Nothing of Shakspere's, on the other hand, better 
confutes the sa) T ing which Drummond of Hawthornden 
attributes to Ben Jonson, that Shakspere wanted art. 
While it is undoubtedly true that, over and over again, 
Shakspere stopped far short of such laborious finish as 
makes the plays of Jonson, whatever else, so admirably 
conscientious, it is equally true that when Shakspere 
chose to take pains his technical workmanship was 
as artistic as his imaginative impulse. Few works 
in any literature possess more artistic unity than 
the Midsummer Night's Dream., few reveal on study 
more of that mastery whose art is so fine as to 
seem artless. Alike in spirit and in form, then, — 
in motive and in technical detail, — this play is a true 
work of art ; its inherent beauty is the chief thing to 
realize, to appreciate, to care for. 

If we would understand why the Midsummer Night' 's 
Dream seems to belong in Shakspere's work where 
we have placed it, however, we must for a while 
neglect this prime duty of enjoyment, and consider 
the play minutely, attending first to the materials 
of which it is made, and then to the way in which it 
handles them. 

Putting aside, as needless for our purpose, those 
various and scattered sources which are believed pecu- 
liarly its own, we may conveniently recall the fact 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 107 

that in the three comedies already considered we 
found certain devices and situations which seemed 
notably effective. 1 In Love's Labour 's Lost, among 
other matters, we noted a fresh, open-air atmosphere, 
a burlesque play performed by characters whose rude- 
ness and eccentricity was in broadly comic contrast to 
the culture of their audience, and the perennially 
amusing confusion of identity. In that case, however, 
the confusion was reached by the implausible device 
of masking. A stage mask, covering only the upper 
features, must leave the mouth free : consequently, 
it does not transform the wearer, and such blunders as 
the King's or Biron's require an audience convention- 
ally to accept a disguise which really is none. Con- 
fusion of identity, however, thus found effective even 
when not plausible, was repeated and elaborately 
developed in the Corned// of Errors. Here, again, 
though, it lacked plausibility ; the audience was asked 
to accept a degree of personal likeness attainable on 
the stage only by means of such masks as were worn 
by the Roman actors for whom the plot was originally 
made. To hasten on, we remarked, among other 
effective traits in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, the 
love-inspired treason of Proteus, and his instanta- 
neous shifts of affection ; though effective, however, 
these were neither plausible nor sympathetic. To 
go no further, here are a number of stage devices, 
already used experimentally by Shakspere with proba- 
ble success, but never in a way which could give 

1 See pp. 86, 91, 9G. 



108 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

either writer, spectator, or reader serious artistic 
satisfaction. 

In the Midsummer Night's Bream all these are 
reproduced, but none experimentally. Each has its 
place in a composition so complete that at sensitive 
moments one shrinks from dissecting it ; and all are 
plausible. The scene is laid in a mythical world far 
enough from reality to make the wood-notes seem that 
of its inevitable atmosphere. The situation of the 
burlesque play is reproduced with a firmer hand ; and 
this time the burlesque interlude has a plot, of which 
we shall see more later. 1 The love treason is trans- 
ferred from a tolerably cool man to an emotionally 
overwrought girl ; thereby, while retaining all its the- 
atrical effect, it becomes at once far less deliberate and 
far more sympathetic. 2 While Proteus tells Valen- 
tine's secret to the Duke, too, Helena tells Hermia's 
only to her lover. Finally, both confusion of identity 
and protean changes of affection 3 are made plausible, 
like very dreams themselves, by bodily, transference to 
a dream-world, where the fairies of English folk-lore 
play endless tricks with mortals and with one another, 
making their fellow-beings fantastically their sport. 

These instances are enough to show why we may 
reasonably call this play, in Shakspere's development, 
a first declaration of artistic consciousness. A con- 
fusion of pleasant motives, already used in unsatis- 

1 Seep. 116. 

2 Cf. T. G. III. i. 1-50 with M. N. D. I. i. 226 seq. 

3 Cf. t. G. II. iv. 192 seq. with M. N, D. II. ii. 103 seq. ; III. i. 
132 seq., etc. 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 109 

factory form, may be guessed to have gathered in his 
mind. Whoever lias had a gleam of artistic experi- 
ence — such as the haunting - line, for example, which 
belongs inevitably in some unwritten sonnet — knows 
that such spirits as these can be laid only by expres- 
sion. There need be no didactic purpose here ; in one 
sense there need hardly be purpose at all. If we 
imagine that the Shakspere we have already defined 
was thus possessed by creative impulse, we imagine 
enough to account for the Midsummer Night's Bream. 

So much for the artistic motive of the play. Turn- 
ing to the technical art by which this is made mani- 
fest, we may conveniently consider it in the three 
aspects which we have earlier seen to be essential to 
any narrative or dramatic composition: plot, charac- 
ter, and atmosphere, or background. 

To a modern reader, the plot of the Midsummer 
Night's Dream seems to concern itself chiefly with the 
doings of the fairies, who are so constantly charming, 
and of the clowns, who are so constantly amusing. 
Even to-day, however, a sight of the play on the stage 
reveals at once that, so far as plot is concerned, these 
matters are accessory ; that the real centre of the plot 
is the love-story of the four Athenians. The artis- 
tic purpose of all the rest is simply to make this 
plausible. With this purpose, the play begins with 
a statement of the condition of affairs in the romantic 
Athens of Theseus, — not a real world, but a world no 
further removed from reality than plenty of others 
which we are accustomed conventionally to accept on 



110 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

the stage. Thence, and not from the actuality of real 
life, we proceed through the extravagant buffoonery 
of the clowns — the most grotesque of human beings, 
but still grotesquely human — to the dreamland of the 
fairies. This dreamland, after all, is little further 
removed from the romantic introductory Athens of 
Theseus than that Athens itself was from the world 
where it found us. Once in dreamland, the fantastic ex- 
travagances of the main plot ■ — ■ in their earlier forms 
so far from credibility — are kept constantly plausible 
by the superhuman agencies which direct them ; and 
these in turn are kept plausible by the incessant inter- 
mingling and contrast with the fairies of the equally 
extravagant, but still fundamentally human clowns. 
Then, after some three acts of this, the morning 
horns of Theseus break the dream ; the fairies vanish ; 
we come back to our own world through the romantic 
Athens of Theseus, with which we began. The fifth 
act recapitulates, almost musically ; the final scene of 
the fairies is not a part of the action, but an epilogue, 
a convention frequent in the Elizabethan theatre. 
The fairy scenes, then, — the accessories by means 
of which the main plot is made artistically plausible, 
■ — are themselves made plausible first by deliberate 
removal from real life ; and secondly by deliberate 
contrast with a phase of real life hardly less extrava- 
gant than they. The constructive art here shown is 
admirable. 

At first, too, this constructive art seems original. 
On consideration, however, it proves to be only an 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 111 

adaptation of a convention common <>n the Elizabethan 
stage. Though among Shakspere's works an Induction 
is found only in the Taming of the Shrew, Inductions — 
Avhich made the main action a play within a play — 
were very frequent throughoul the early drama. "We 
shall have- more to say of them when we come to the 
Taming of the Shrew} Here it is enough to point out 
that the first act of the Midsummer Nigld's Bream is, 
essentially, a very skilful development of the conven- 
tional Induction. 

The plot of the Midsummer Night's Dream, then, is 
far superior to anything we have met before. When 
we corne to the characters we find a state of things 
less favorable to our notion that the play should 
be placed here in Shakspere's artistic develop- 
ment. Certainly less individual than those of the 
Two Gentlemen of Verona, these characters seem 
almost less so than those of Love's Labour's 
Lost. Taken by themselves, for example, the Athe- 
nians of the court of Theseus seem hardly more 
individual than the Ephesians of the Comedy of 
Errors. Considered not by themselves, however, but 
rather as one of three clearly defined groups, their 
aspect changes ; they stand in marked and strongly 
dramatic contrast to two other groups, as distinct 
from one another as from the Athenian courtiers,— 
the clowns and the fairies. In answer, then, to those 
critics who, largely on the score of individualized char- 
acter, would place the Midsummer Nigh? s Dream earlier 
than the Two Gentlemen of Verona, we may say that, 
1 See p. 1 59. 



112 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

like the other plays considered in the last chapter, the 
latter is intrinsically experimental, while the former is 
intrinsically artistic ; and that three broadly general- 
ized groups of character, whose mutual relations are 
skilfully adjusted, fit the general artistic motive of the 
Midsummer Night's Dream far better than could more 
individual characters whose individuality should make 
them a bit unmanageable. In the Two Gentlemen 
of Verona, furthermore, the individual touches were 
rather matters of experimental detail than of creative 
imagination. The contrast defines a general truth : 
Because a writer can individualize character, it does 
not follow that he can master and manage his own in- 
dividual creatures. In the perfectly manageable vague- 
ness of character here, then, we have fresh evidence of 
how careful Shakspere's art may have been. As we 
have seen, if our chronology be not all wrong, his 
power developed slowly. Here, then, we may at least 
guess that the state of things shows him in a truly 
artistic mood, too wise even to attempt things at all 
beyond his certain power. 

In one scene, though, the juvenility of character 
seems too great for any such explanation ; this is in 
the child-like squabble between Hermia and Helena. 1 
On the stage, to be sure, it is still funny ; but the 
fun is crude : grown girls, we feel, never squabble 
quite in this way. Properly to appreciate the scene, 
we must remember the circumstances for which it 
was written : there were no female actors, — a fact 
which goes far to atone for the coarseness of female 

1 III. ii. 282-344. 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 113 

character common throughout the lesser Elizabethan 
drama; Helena was written to be played by a big boy, 
Hermia by a small one. 

If we be inclined to wander in our delight with 
the atmosphere of the Midsummer Night's Dream, a 
fact like this should recall us to ourselves. Dainty 
as its atmosphere is, specific too as distinguished from 
any other in literature, the play itself could never 
have seemed to its writer only the beautiful poem 
which it chiefly seems to us. He made it for 
living actors, — men and boys. The fairy atmos- 
phere was to be conveyed to his audience not 
only by the lovely lines which remain as fresh 
as ever, but by the bodily presence of child-actors, 
whose actual forms should revive among the specta- 
tors the familiar old fancies of the little people. 
Such fancies, far from what arise nowadays as we 
contemplate in the Midsummer Night's Dream the 
stout legs of a middle-aged ballet, could be more than 
suggested on the stage of Shakspere's time. It was 
a stage whose conventions allowed Macbeth and Ban- 
quo, fifteen years later, to make their entrance on 
wicker hobby-horses, with dangling false legs 1 ; whose 
conventions permitted Cleopatra to wear laced stays, 
which she orders cut in a moment of agitation. 2 On 
such a stage, the pink limbs of chubby children — 
and the lesser fairies who serve Bottom have no lines 
which might not be taught a child of three or four 3 — 

1 See p. 309. - Anton// and Cleopatra, I. iii. 71. 

3 III. i. 166 seq. ; IV. i. 



114 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

might have seemed almost actually the fairy fancies 
which remain the folk-lore of Northern Europe. 

Here and there, among modern peasantry, such folk- 
lore still survives, much as it was when Shakspere 
wrote. The contrast between his way of dealing with 
it and ours is typical of the change in the times. 
He asked himself, as an artist, how it might serve 
his artistic purpose ; and using it accordingly, he 
made it the lasting type of cultivated romantic tra- 
dition. If Spenser's fairies never quite lived, and 
Drayton's have long been forgotten, Shakspere's will 
always remain the lasting little people of the English 
ages. Men of our time treat the old stories differ- 
ently, asking not what may be done with them, but 
what they mean. In the legends of the little people, 
some wise contemporaries of ours fancy that they 
can trace lingering race-memories of the dwarfish 
aborigines of Europe. When our own ancestors 
drove them back toward the northern snows, these 
scholars guess, some may have lingered in caves and 
burrows, emerging at night, brutishly grateful to who- 
ever was kind, mischievous to whoever plagued them. 
So, perhaps, there are modern" minds who may get 
from the 31idsummer NigJifs Dream more satisfaction 
in pointing out that the name of Oberon is a version of 
that of the dwarf king Alberich — himself doubtless 
some prehistoric Eskimo — than in giving themselves 
over to the delights of Oberon's dreamy realm. 

As students not of science, but of literature, how- 
ever, we should never lose sight of these delights. 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM L15 

Our study has compelled us to analyze in this play 
something besides its beauty. It we would under- 
stand Shakspere, however, its beauty, not its anat- 
omy, is what we must think of first, last, and always. 
Its beauty is what Shakspere must have cared for 
and thought of. As a true creative artist, indeed, 
he was probably less conscious of its mechanism 
than our study has made us. An artist who has 
real creative impulse generally works by an unwit- 
ting instinct, with a truth which makes his work 
both significant and organic ; sometimes it seems 
as if a critically conscious artist could never create 
like one who believes himself to work untrammelled, 
to say things as he says them, because, without 
troubling himself as to why, he feels sure that 
just thus they should be said. Some mood like this 
seems to underlie the famous criticism of Theseus 
on this very fairy story. By appreciating that, after 
all, we may best appreciate the Midsummer Niglit's 
Dream : 1 — 

' ; I never may believe 
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys. 
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, 
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend - 
More than cool reason ever comprehends. 
The lunatic, the lover and the poet 
Are of imagination all compact: 
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, 
That is, the madman : the lover, all as frantic, 
Sees Helen's heauty in a brow of Egypt : 

i V. i. 2-17. 



116 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, 

And as imagination bodies forth 

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing 

A local habitation and a name." 



III. Romeo and Juliet. 

[An imperfect and probably unauthorized quarto of Romeo and Juliet 
was published anonymously in 1597. A tolerably complete quarto, 
also anonymous, appeared in 1599; there was a third quarto in 1609. 
The play is attributed to Shakspere by Meres; and the Centurie of 
Prayse cites an allusion to it as Shakspere's in 1595. 

The story, a very old one, occurs in various forms and languages. 
The immediate sources of the play are two English versions of a 
French version of a novel by Bandello : Romeus and Juliet, a long 
poem by Arthur Brooke, published in 1562; and Paynter's Palace of 
Pleasure. 

Conjectures as to date range from 1591 to the second quarto. The 
general opinion seems to be that there was an early play, perhaps 
collaborative, which Shakspere slowly rewrote at intervals. The play, 
in its present form, may be reasonably placed near the Midsummer 
Night's Dream, about 1594 or 1595.] 

One reason for grouping together the Midsummer 
NigMs Dream and Romeo and Juliet lies in the fact 
that the story of the latter is virtually the same as 
that of Pyramus and Thisbe. As in Love's Labour 's 
Lost, Shakspere at once practised and burlesqued the 
absurdities of fashionable style, so here he seems a bit 
later to treat this tragic tale in two distinct moods : 
in one, he makes of it a play which, whatever 



ROMEO AND JULIET 117 

its date, is generally admitted to be his first great 
tragedy ; in the other he turns it into a burlesque 
which emphasizes every point of the tragedy where 
the sublime verges on the ridiculous. Another thing 
which groups the plays together is Mercutio's lyric 
interlude about Queen Mab, 1 — a passage so fatal to 
modern actors, who try to make it a part of the 
action. Clearly, however, the relation of Romeo and 
Juliet to the Midsummer Night's Dream is even more 
debatable than we found the relation between that 
play and the preceding comedies. 

The relation of Romeo and Juliet to its sources, on 
the other hand, — to matter distinctly not Shaks- 
perean, — is very close indeed. Most of us know the 
play so well, and think of it so constantly as Shaks- 
pere's from beginning to end, that a direct comparison 
of some familiar passages and their sources is worth 
while. It will show more palpably than any similar 
comparison of less familiar matters how completely 
an Elizabethan dramatist looked upon his task as 
mere translation. 2 Two examples will serve our pur- 
pose : the first is that which Shakspere translated 
into the familiar character of the Nurse, so often 
talked about as peculiarly his own ; the second is that 
which he translated into the soliloquy of Juliet when 
she drinks the sleeping-draught. These are broadly 
typical not only of Romeo arid Juliet throughout, but 
also of Shakspere's plays in general, and indeed of 
the whole Elizabethan drama. 

1 I. iv. 53-95. 2 See p. 76. 



118 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

In Paynter's version of the story J there is nothing 
more than mention that Juliet's governess, an old 
woman, was the go-between for the lovers ; and this 
is said to be all that exists in either the French ver- 
sion or the Italian. Brooke, on the other hand, intro- 
duces the following passage : 2 — 

" To Romeus she goes of him she doth desyre, 
To know the mean of manage by councell of the fryre. 
On Saterday, quod he, if Juliet come to shrift, 
She shall be shrived and maided, how lyke you noorse this drift ? 
Now by my truth (quod she) gods blessing have your hart; 
For yet in all my life 1 have not heard of such a part. 
Lord, how you yong men can such crafty wiles devise, 
If that you love the daughter well to bleare the mothers eyes. 

Now for the rest let me and Juliet alone : 

To get her leave, some feate excuse I will devise anone 

For that her golden locks by sloth have been unkempt : 

Or for unwares some wanton dreame the youthfull damsell 

drempt, 
Or for in thoughts of love her ydel time she spent : 
Or otherwise within her hart deserved to be shent. 
I know her mother will in no case say her nay: 
I warrant you she shall not fayle to come on Saterday. 
And then she sweares to him, the mother loves her well : 
And how she gave her suck in youth she leaveth not to tell. 
A pretty babe (quod she) it was when it was yong : 
Lord, how it could full pretely have prated with it tong. 
A thousand time and more I laid her on my lappe, 
And clapt her on the buttocke soft and kist where I did clappe. 

1 Both Paynter's version and Brooke's were published by the New 
Shakspere Society, ed. P. A. Daniel, in 1875. They occur also in 
Hazlitt's Shakspere's Library. 

2 Romeus and Juliet, 631 seq. 



ROMEO .VXD JULIET 119 

And gladder then was I of such a kisse forsooth: 
Then I had heen to have a kisse of some olde lechers mouth. 
And thus of Juliets youth began this prating noorse. 
And of her present state to make a tedious long discoorse. 
For • . when these Beldams sit at ease upon theyr tayle : 
The day and eke the candle light before theyr talke shall fayle. 
And part they say is true, and part they do devise: 
Yet boldly do they chat of both when no man checkes theyr 
lyes." 

That marvellously Shaksperean creation, the Nurse, 
it turns out, was conceived and brought forth, thirty 
years before Shakspere's time, by Arthur Brooke. 

Now for that marvellously Shaksperean piece of 
psychology, when Juliet drinks the potion. Here is 
Paynter's version : 1 — 

li Iulietta beinge within hir Chambre having an eawer 
ful of Water standing uppon the Table filled the viole 
which the Frier gave her: and after .she had made the 
mixture, she set it by hir bed side, and went to Bed. 
And being layde, new Thoughtes began toassaile her, with 
a concept of grievous Death, which brought hir into such 
case as she could not tell what to doe, but playning inces- 
santly sayd, 'Am not I the most unhappy and desperat 
creature, that ever was borne of Woman? . . nry distresse 
hath brought me to sutch extremity, as to save mine honor 
and conscience, I am forced to devoure the drynke whereof 
I know not the vertue : but what know I (sayd she) 
whether the Operatyon of thys Pouder will be to soone or 
to late, or not correspondent to the due time . . ? What 
know I moreover, if the Serpents and other venomous and 
crauling Wormes, whych commonly frequent the Graves 
1 Daniel, p. 130; Hazlitt, p. 244. 



120 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

and pittes of the Earth wyll hurt me, thynkyng that I am 
cleade? But howe shall I indure the stynche of so many 
carions and Bones of myne auncestors which rest in the 
Grave, yf by Fortune I do awake before Ehomeo and Fryer 
Laurence doe come to help me? ' " 1 

All directly from the French, this is substantially 
repeated by Brooke. At this point, then, we may 
turn to his version, which goes on a little more fluently 
than Paynter's : — 

" And whilst she in these thoughts doth dwell somewhat to long, 
The force of her ymagining anon ctyd waxe so strong, 
That she surmysde she saw, out of the hollow vaulte, 
(A griesly thing to looke upon) the carkas of Tybalt ; 
Right in the selfe same sort that she few dayes before 
Had seene him in his blood enibrewde, to death eke wounded 

sore 
And then when she agayne within her selfe had wayde 
That quicke she should be buried there, and by his side be 

layde, 
All comfortles, for she shall living feere have none, 
But many a rotten carkas, and full many a naked bone ; 
Her dainty tender partes gan shever all for dred, 
Her golden heares did stand upright upon her chillish head. 
Then pressed with the feare that she there lived in, 
A sweat as colde as mountaine yse pearst through her tender 

skin, 
That with the moysture hath wet every part of hers : 
And more besides, she vainely thinkes, whilst vainely thus she 

feares, 
A thousand bodies dead have compast her about, 
And lest they will dismember her she greatly stands in dout." 2 

i Cf. Romeo and Juliet, IV. iii. 14 seq. 
2 Romeus and Juliet, 2Z11 seq. 



ROMEO AXD JULIET 121 

Paynter's conclusion of the translation is perhaps 
the more memorable : — 

" And feelyng that hir forces diminyshed by lyttle and 
lyttle, fearing that through to great debilyty she was not 
able to do hir enterpryse, like a furious and insensate 
Woman, with out further care, gulped up the Water wj'thin 
the Voyal, then crossing hir amies upon hir stomacke, she 
lost at that instante all the powers of hir Body, restyng 
in a Traunce." 

In Juliet's soliloquy, Shakspere introduces two 
touches not in these original versions : her business 
with the dagger, and her doubt of the Friar's honesty. 
Apart from these, he merely condenses and translates 
these grotesque old narratives into permanent form ; 
for example : J — 

" O, if I wake, shall I not he distraught, 
Environed with all these hideous fears 1 
And madly play with my forefathers' joints ? 
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud ? 
And, in this rage with some great kinsman's bone, 
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains ? 
0, look 1 methinks I see my cousin's ghost, 
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body 
Upon a rapier's point : stay, Tybalt, stay ! 
Romeo, I come ! this do I drink to thee." 

With less citation, it would have been hard to em- 
phasize the two facts which these typical passages 
should make clear : in the first place, they show 
how Elizabethan dramatists generally dealt with the 

1 IV- iii. 49 seq. 



122 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

original sources of their plays, — tragic, comic, and 
historic alike ; in the second place, they prove the 
remoteness of Romeo and Juliet, even in psychologic 
detail, from what it is commonly thought to be, — a 
pure creation of Shakspere's brain. 

Turning now from substance to style, we may find 
in the style of Romeo and Juliet many traits by 
no means peculiar to Shakspere among Elizabethan 
writers. A glance at Romeo's speeches anywhere in the 
first act, 1 or at any of Mercutio's, 2 will reveal plenty 
of such quips, and cranks, and puns as we found in 
Love's Labour's Lost. Throughout the play, too, we 
continually come on lyric passages, as distinguished 
from dramatic. For one thing, rhymes are frequent. 
Again, such a speech as Mercutio's about Queen Mab 3 
can be understood only when we compare it to inter- 
polated songs in modern comedies ; it is simply a 
charming, independent piece of lyric declamation. So, 
when Romeo accosts Juliet 4 we have a formal sonnet ; 
nor can blank verse disguise the essentially lyric 
quality of the Epithalamium ; 5 or of the Morning 
Song ; 6 or of the fugue-like quartette of lament over 
the unconscious Juliet. 7 The more one studies the 
play, in short, the more curiously archaic the style 
often seems ; it is really an example of the Euphuistic 
fantasy prevalent in early Elizabethan literature. 

1 E. g. I. i. 177 seq. 

2 His dying pun is familiar; III. i. 102. 

3 I. iv. 53 seq. 

4 I. v. 95-108. 6 III. v. 1-36. 

5 HI. ii. 1-33. 7 IV. v. 43-64. 



ROMEO AXD JULIET 123 

While this literature is obsolete, however, Romeo 
and -Juliet, in spite of its fidelity to obsolete sources, 
survives among the most popular plays on the modern 
stage. The reason why is not far to seek. Shaks- 
pere has infused the whole play with creative imagi- 
nation. Oh the numberless beauties of detail, which 
make us half forget its eccentricities, we need not 
dwell ; the great lyric charm of Romeo and Juliet is 
not its chief merit. As a composition, as a complete 
conception, the play is masterly. 

Fundamentally the plot is that of a conventional 
tragedy of blood. Mercutio, Tybalt, Paris, Romeo, and 
Juliet, — not to speak of Lady Montague, — come to 
violent deaths ; and the last scene takes place in a 
charnel-house, which, in the stage setting of the time, 
might well have been strewn with heaps of bones. On 
horror's head horrors accumulate as much as any- 
where ; but whereas in the old tragedies of blood the 
horrors came from nowhere, in this case they are the 
legitimate effects of uncontrollable causes. For ex- 
ample, the play opens after a manner still conven- 
tional, with a scene between servants, the object of 
which apparently is only to occupy the first few 
minutes. But watch what these servants do : One 
bites his thumb. A fight ensues. Tybalt enters and 
takes part. Before blood-letting on either side has 
given his temper a chance to cool, the fight is offi- 
cially stopped. While his passion, thus aroused, still 
runs high, he discovers Romeo at the Capulet feast, 
where Romeo's presence seems to him a studied in- 



124 - WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

suit. Restrained by old Capulet, he grows more angry 
still. As soon as he meets Romeo in public, he openly 
insults him. Mercutio steps in, and is killed. Romeo 
avenges him. So the tragedy proceeds ; were it not for 
that first thoughtless thumb-biting of the servants, we 
see, nothing could have fallen out in quite this way. 
The thumb-biting is one of the direct causes which by 
a growing series of effects lead straight to the final 
catastrophe. Few plots anywhere are so carefully 
composed. 

The individuality of the characters, meanwhile, 
constant and consistent throughout, is not so em- 
phasized as to distract attention from the plot. 
Rather the very coherence of plot on which we 
have just touched is secured by the fact that the 
temperaments of the separate characters interact 
as they would in life. It is because Tybalt and 
Mercutio, for example, are the kind of men they 
are, that they come to their ends in a way which 
involves the fate of Romeo and Juliet. Throughout 
the play one feels instinctively that here, at last, 
the creative imagination of Shakspere had begun to 
make his own fictions as real as human beings. 

We can hardly conclude, however, that this matter 
presented itself to him as seriously as we are disposed 
to think of it. After all, what a writer feels, in the 
position we here suppose to have been Shakspere's, is 
not so much profound psychologic wisdom as intuitive 
knowledge that the people he is describing must be 
what they are, and must act or think as they do. So far 



ROMEO AND JULIET 125 

as his conscious intervention with them goes, indeed, 
it may rather impair than improve their vitality. 
In Romeo and Juliet, for example, there is one state- 
ment which, perhaps fantastically, might be taken for 
evidence — as far as it goes — that Shakspere was 
not consciously treating his characters so seriously 
as posterity has supposed. This concerns Juliet's 
age. In Brooke she is sixteen years old. Why Shaks- 
pere should make her two years younger has given rise 
to much speculation, about the prematurity of Italian 
youth and the like. Perhaps this speculation is very 
wise. More probably, however, at least to some of us, 
the reason why Shakspere's Juliet is fourteen seems 
to lie in a single pun, at the time of Juliet's first 
appearance : x — 

" Lady Capult > : She 's not fourteen. 
Nurse: 1 '11 lay fourteen of my teeth, — 

And yet, to my teen be it spoken I have but four, — 
She is not fourteen." 

Clearly no other numeral in the teens could make 
that slight joke at once so sonorous, so precise, and so 
funny. Fifteen makes a bad pun with five ; sixteen 
sounds short and sibilant; seven, eight, or nine teeth 
are enough to make a decent showing. Right or 
wrong, too, this simple reason for Juliet's age — so 
very remote from modern artistic seriousness — is 
exactly the sort of reason which would generally 
have affected a writer of the period to which we 
have attributed Borneo and Juliet. 

1 I. iii. 12 seq. 



126 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

A similar state of things pervades the atmosphere 
of the play. In actual detail, much of it is English. 
In total effect, it is so Italian that one may read Romeo 
and Juliet with increasing surprise and delight in 
Verona itself. Such an effect comes generally by no 
deliberate process of study, but rather from a spon- 
taneous feeling in the artist that thus things ought 
to be. 

In spite, then, of its closeness to its origins, in spite, 
too, of so many contemporaneous vices of style, Romeo 
and Juliet seems as original as it seems vital. In 
Brooke and Paynter there is no plausibility ; in S'haks- 
pere's play there is such veracity of conception that a 
thousand trivialities of style in no way impair its 
place in world-literature. Romeo and Juliet is a great 
work of art ; and first among Shakspere's works it 
expresses a great emotional truth, — a lasting, tragic 
fact of human experience. 

A creative artist is not so apt to comprehend the 
moral significance of what he creates as are his 
critics, particularly after the lapse of two or three cen- 
turies. It is more than likely that a writer in Shaks- 
pere's position may not actually have realized even 
what we have already touched on. It is most unlikely 
that he should have realized what makes Romeo and 
Juliet so permanently human. The tragedy it deals 
with, the tragedy of youthful love, is inevitable. 
Such love must pass ; in real life, if fate do not cut it 
short in all its purity, it must lapse into some matur- 
ity far different from itself — calm domesticity, per- 



ROMEO AND JULIET 12"/ 

haps, or adulterous passion. The very fate of Romeo 
and Juliet, then, a real fate, full of that sense of the 
inevitable which must pervade true tragedy, proves, 
on consideration, not only broadly typical, but, for all 
its sadness, inherently happy. It preserves heroically 
permanent' an emotional purity which in prolonged 
life could not have survived. 

Our sympathy with this is all the warmer because 
the superficial poignancy of the tragedy has a pathos 
which anybody can feel, without a bit of analysis. 
Despite all these merits, though, — its tragic pathos 
which appeals to everybody ; its veracity of concep- 
tion, its sentiment, its poetry which appeal to the 
ripest culture, — Romeo and Juliet, as a play, seems 
in the end only a story told for its own sake by an 
artist whose creative imagination was at last astir. 
One finds in it no fundamental sense of mystery, 
no cloud-piercing vision leading upward the eyes of 
the elect, no self-revealing impulse. What Shaks- 
pere actually did, in short, reduces itself to this : 
With laboriously mastered art, and with a creative 
impulse not traceable in his earlier work, lie gave 
permanent vitality to matters which in other hands 
had shown only possibilities of life. From what 
seemed the material for a tragedy of blood, he 
made a great tragic poem, — not philosophic in its 
motive, like the tragedies of Marlowe, but more last- 
ing even than they in its human truth. This he did, 
too, after a manner which we shall learn to recog- 
nize as his own. With the least possible departure 



128 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

from his sources, with the utmost economy of invention, 
and despite endless affectations of style which have 
been fatal to the work of his contemporaries, he trans- 
lated Brooke and Paynter into this great tragedy which 
we all know. To himself it very probably seemed 
only a play in which he somehow felt more hearty 
interest than of old. To us, however, it seems rather 
a play throughout which we feel the spontaneous im- 
pulse of his creative imagination. From beginning to 
end, we can see now, the tragedy is permeated with 
that deep, lasting sense of fact which makes us so 
often think of Shakspere not as an author but as a 
creator. 



IV. Richard III. 

[Richard III. was entered in the Stationers' Register on October 
20th, 1597. It was published anonymously in quarto during the same 
year; the next year came a second quarto with Shakspere's name; 
there were three other quartos during his lifetime. The popularity 
thus evinced is confirmed by the fact that, besides Meres's allusion, 
the Centurie of Pray se cites eight others during Shakspere's life, two of 
which refer it directly to Shakspere, and four of which mention, as 
familiar, Richard's last line, " A horse ! A horse ! My kingdom for 
a horse ! " 

Its source is Holinshed, and perhaps an earlier play, now lost. 

In spite of its long connection with Shakspere, its authorship has 
been disputed on internal grounds. On internal evidence it is com- 
monly assigned to 1593 or 1594] 

Whoever wrote Richard III., the play so clearly 
belongs to the same series of chronicle-histories with 
Henry VI. that, as we have seen, the modern version 



RICHARD III 129 

of it which still holds the stage contains actual scenes, 
as well as speeches, from the latter play. Were it not 
still popular on the stage, indeed, one would be dis- 
posed to group it rather with the experimental plays 
of the last chapter than with the more masterly plays 
of this. Its vitality, however, so far as it goes, is not 
accidental. While, as a whole, the play follows the 
conventions of the old chronicle-history so closely 
that, in its original form, it cannot hold the attention 
of a modern audience, it contains, in its central figure, 
a character as vitally human, if not as complex, as 
any that Shakspere created. 

On the archaism of so much of the play is based 
part of the doubt as to its authorship. The poet who 
could make the Midsummer Night's Dream, it is felt, 
or Romeo and Juliet, could not have perpetrated the 
absurdities which half impair the dramatic power of 
the scene where Gloster stops a royal funeral in the 
street, to make perfidious love to the widowed chief 
mourner ; 1 nor could he have made three royal 
widows sit on the ground, lamenting through a 
hundred lines like Irish keeners. 2 Again, some 
critics feel, the simplicity of villainy embodied in 
the character of Richard is too inhuman, after all, 
for such a master of psychology as Shakspere had 
already proved himself. More likely, to such a state 
of mind as theirs, this whole play is really Marlowe's, 
or perhaps collaborative. 

The force of these criticisms is evident. To avoid 
1 I. ii. 2 IV. iv. 



130 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

them — to give Richard III. a definite place in our 
notion of Shakspere's development — we must remind 
ourselves in the first place of the state of dramatic 
literature in 1593, and in the second place of what we 
have assumed Shakspere to have done since that year. 

As we saw when we studied Henry VI, chronicle- 
history, the most typically Elizabethan kind of drama, 
remained archaic in form and in purpose at a time 
when at least in purpose tragedy had become modernly 
comprehensible, and comedy had become so in both 
purpose and form. To a modern mind, the obsolete, 
rather operatic than dramatic, methods which have 
made Shakspere's Richard III. give place on the stage 
to Colley Cibber's vulgar version, are plain marks of 
weakness. To one familiar with the older chronicle- 
histories, they are simply a continuation, with added 
artistic purpose, of the conventions which the theatre 
of their time accepted. 

To analyze in detail the art of Richard III. would 
for our purposes involve too long a delay. The result 
of it any one can feel. The character of Richard, for 
all the simplicity of his villainy, is as human as any 
in fiction ; again and again, as you read his lines, 
you find yourself accepting them as if they were 
actual human utterances. The world in which this 
human being moves, on the other hand, is almost as 
unreal, in its archaic conventionality, as that of the 
Moralities and the Interludes ; and so are many of 
his own speeches. 1 It is as if a modern, realistic 

i E.g. I. i. 30, 145-154. 



RICHARD III 131 

portrait were painted on such a golden background 
as one finds among thirteenth-century Italians. De- 
spite this incongruity, however, so palpable on the 
modern stage as to be dramatically impossible, a mere 
reader of the play is hardly aware that anything is 
wrong. Like an Elizabethan theatre-goer, he accepts 
the half-lyric old conventions, and finds his attention 
centred on the vivid vitality of the central figure. 
Here he finds completed the tendency which, in 
the Third Part of Henry VI, he had already per- 
ceived. 1 In Gloster is finally concentrated all the evil, 
all the disorder which had been desolating England 
from the moment when discord rose over the coffin 
of Henry V. In Gloster, when all this evil is finally 
ripe, it meets its just end with the victory of the first 
Tudor sovereign, whose granddaughter still reigned 
when Richard III was written. Readers, even 
to-day, accept Richard III. as a great tragic poem ; 
actors as a superb one-part play. 

What seemed its lack of art, then, proves rather 
to have been its lack of complete emergence from 
archaic convention. Even this, however, does not 
explain its place in the work of Shakspere. Richard 
III., as a character, we have seen, certainly has such 
vitality as can come only from creative imagination 
in its maker ; but, compared with the plays we have 
assigned to about the same period, Richard, III. — 
for all its mere theatrical effectiveness — is extremely 
crude. 

1 See p. 81. 



132 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

In this very fact, sometimes used as an argument 
against its genuineness, or at least against our con- 
jectural chronology, we may find a strong argu- 
ment in our favor. The Midsummer Night's Dream 
carried English comedy to a point as yet unap- 
proached ; so, at least in the matter of human plausi- 
bility, Romeo and Juliet carried English tragedy ; and 
we saw reason for believing that these two plays 
belong to the same period. Whatever any writer's 
genius, such effort as is involved in either of these 
plays is exhausting, — still more exhausting is such 
effort as is involved in both. Given this fact, and 
given the comparative lack of development in chron- 
icle-history, we could not rationally expect a chron- 
icle-history from the same hand to show anything 
like a ripeness parallel to that of the ripening comedy 
and tragedy. At most, we could expect it to show 
growing signs of imaginative vitality ; and these are 
just what we find in Richard III. 

The state of things thus suggested — that when 
Shakespere was doing one kind of work witli excep- 
tional vigor his work of other kinds shows far less 
departure from conventions — we shall find through- 
out his career. For our purposes, it is the chief thing 
to note concerning; Richard III. 



RICHARD 11 133 



V. Richard II. 

[Richard II. was entered in the Stationers' Register on August 
29th, 1597. It was published anonymously during the same year; 
and again the next year, with Shakspere's name. In these quartos 
the deposition scene — IV. i. 153-318 — is omitted. It appears first 
in a quarto of 1608 ; and remains in the fourth quarto, of 1615. Ap- 
parently it belongs to the original play, and was suppressed as politi- 
cally objectionable. Richard II. was mentioned by Meres. There 
seems to have been another play on this subject which was perhaps 
the one played on the eve of Essex's rebellion in 1600-1. 

The source of Richard II. is Holinshed, which is closely followed. 

On internal evidence, the play is commonly assigned to about the 
same period as Richard III. Probably it is the later of the two.J 

Like Richard III., Richard II. must for our pur- 
poses be regarded as a chronicle-history written at a 
moment when Shakspere's best energies were concen- 
trated on comedy and tragedy. As we should expect, 
its method is essentially conventional, — nothing is 
done or said exactly as it would have been in real 
life. The story, in short, is translated from Holin- 
shed into a dramatic form plainly influenced by 
Marlowe's, whose Edward II this play closely resem- 
bles. For all this, Richard II. differs from Shaks- 
pere's earlier chronicle-histories in two respects : 
it has distinct unity of purpose, — its scenes and 
incidents are carefully selected, and organically com- 
posed ; and it is so complete in finish that its nu- 
merous beauties of detail are not salient. In other 
words, while Shakspere's earlier chronicle-histories 
may be regarded as experiments, Richard II, without 



134 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

palpable originality, uses a mastered archaic method 
for the expression of a definite artistic purpose. 

Of course, Shakspere was not inventing. Unless we 
constantly discard the notion of invention, we cannot 
understand chronicle-history. Actual historical facts, 
however, impress historians who are also artists in 
specifically emotional ways ; and such emotions even 
modern writers of history, if they be artists, try to 
express. This is what Shakspere has done in Richard 
II ; and if Richard III. remind one of some modern 
figure painted on a thirteenth-century background, 
Richard II., consistent throughout, reminds one 
more vividly still of the quaintly life-like portrait of 
Richard himself enthroned in golden glory, still to 
be seen in the choir of Westminster Abbey. 

In many places, Shakspere follows Holinshed's 
actual words with a closeness which makes the superb 
sound of Shakspere's language amazing ; this is not- 
able, for example, in the heralds' speeches, at the lists 
at Coventry. 1 When Shakspere invents his speeches, 
too, as in the scene where for eleven consecutive 
lines the dying Gaunt puns on his own name, 2 or in 
the scene where Richard, just deposed, goes through 
sixteen lines of sentimental euphuism with a mirror, 3 
Shakspere's method is as archaically conventional as 
ever. This conventionality, however, is no more sali- 
ent than the actual beauties which surround it ; such 
for example, as Gaunt's noble speech about England, 4 

1 I. iii. 104-116. 2 II. i. 73-83. 

3 IV. i. 276-291. * II. i. 40-66. 



RICHARD H 135 

or as Carlisle's wonderful narrative of the death of 
Norfolk : 1 — 

" Many a time hath banish'd Norfolk fought 
For Jesu Christ in glorious Christian field, 
Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross 
Against black pagans, Turks, and Saracens ; 
And toil'd with works of war, retired himself 
To Italy ; and there at Venice gave 
His body to that pleasant country's earth, 
And his pure soul unto his captain Christ, 
Under whose colours he had fought so long." 

Conventionalities and beauties alike, each seems ex- 
actly in place. What is more, while none even of 
the beauties are inevitably human utterances, each 
generally helps to define the character who utters 
it ; for Avhile the conventionality of phrase in 
Richard II. prevents the characters from seeming 
exactly human, they have distinct individuality. Car- 
lisle, brave, loyal, simple, is an ideal English gen- 
tleman ; York, always honest, is weak and dull; 
Bolingbroke, supple, intriguing, yet somehow royal, 
reminds one curiously of Louis Napoleon ; Richard 
himself, in his feeble, delicate complexity, is the most 
individual of all. Amiable, almost fascinating, he is 
fundamentally unable to keep fact in view ; with 
graceful sentimentality he is always wandering from 
plain matters of fact to fantastic dreams and phrases. 
Euphuism, so inapt when we stop to criticise it in 
Gaunt or Bolingbroke, becomes in Richard strongly 

1 IV. i. 92-100. 



136 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

characteristic. Winning in the irresponsibility of 
private life, such a character when clothed with the 
dignity of royalty becomes a public danger. The 
fatal incompatibility of the character and the duties 
of Richard II. involves the tragedy which pervades 
this play. 

For besides being a chronicle-history, and a master- 
piece of its archaic kind, Richard II is a really tragic 
prologue to the series of chronicle-histories which it 
opens. Thus we generally think of it, neglecting its 
position in the literature of its time. To define this, 
we should compare it with its obvious model, the 
Edward II. of Marlowe. In this tragedy — so pro- 
foundly tragic that one inclines to forget its real char- 
acter as chronicle-history — there are passages more 
human than anything in Shakspere's play. Shaks- 
pere, for instance, has no lines which touch one like 
Edward's speech amid the squalid horrors of his 
dungeon : — 

" Tell Isabel the queen, I look'd not thus, 
When for her sake I ran at tilt in France, 
And there unhors'd the Duke of Cleremont." 

The entire death-scene of Edward is finer than that 
of Richard. As a whole, however, Edward II., while 
at times more vitally imaginative than Richard II., 
shows far less mastery of art. If more imagi- 
native, it is much less evenly sustained. The trait of 
Richard II in the development of Shakspere begins 
to define itself. At a moment when he was making 



KIX<; JOHN 137 

permanent tragedies and comedies, which occupied 
his best energy, he was also making the old conven- 
tions of chronicle-history serve to express, in a thor- 
oughly mastered archaic form, his growing sense of 
fact. 



VI. King John. 

[King John is the only one of Shakspere's plays never entered in 
the Stationers' Register. Apart from its mention by Meres, there is 
no definite trace of it until its publication in the folio of 1623 

Unlike Shakspere's other chronicle-histories, it is founded, not on 
the chronicles themselves, but on an earlier play, The Truubltsume 
Raigne of John King of England, etc., published in 1591. This was 
reprinted in 1611, with the name "W. Sh." on the titlepage. In all 
probability, however, the attributing of this earlier play to Shakspere 
is merely the trick of a dishonest publisher. 

From internal evidence King John has been conjecturally assigned 
to 1595 or 1596. Critics generally agree in placing it somewhere 
between Richard II. and Henry /J'.] 

Less careful, less constantly sustained than Richard 
II, King John often impresses one as queerer, more 
archaic, more puzzling than any other of Shakspere's 
chronicle-histories. This impression, of course, may 
be chiefly due to the accident that in most editions 
of the series it is printed first, and so that one is 
apt to read it with no preparation for its conven- 
tions. As we shall see, however, there are reasons 
enough in the play as it stands to make it seem at 
first sight more strange than what we have already 
considered, and yet, on inspection, to prove it a dis- 



138 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

tinct step forward in the development of chronicle- 
history. 

One cause for its oddity of effect lies in its origin. 
Instead of translating directly from the chronicles, 
Shakspere clearly did not trouble himself about them 
at all ; but only adapted a clumsy old play to the im- 
proving conditions of the stage. At the time, the 
subject of this play was accidentally popular. Though 
tradition generally confirms history in declaring John 
to have been the worst king England ever had, tradi- 
tion and history equally agree in preserving a sus- 
picion that he came to his end by poison, adminis- 
tered by an ecclesiastic who had been enraged beyond 
measure by John's attacks on the vested property of 
the Church. When England broke away from the 
church of Rome, then, John, by an obvious distor- 
tion of tradition, became something like a Protestant 
hero. In the early editions of Foxe's Book of Martyrs 
there is a full page of illustrations, showing how the 
wicked monk, duly absolved to begin with, took the 
poison from a toad, put it in the king's wine-cup, 
tasted the liquor to disarm suspicion, died at the 
same time with the king, and had masses regularly 
said for his traitorous, murderous soul. This view of 
things was presented, among others, in the Trouble- 
some Raigne. 

The old play, thus for the moment popular, was in 
two parts. In adapting it, Shakspere reduced it to 
the limits of a single performance. However he 
may have improved it in many ways, he managed in 



KING JOHN 139 

one way to make it decidedly less intelligible than 
before. In the Troublesome Raigne there are a num- 
ber of ribald scenes where the Bastard sacks religious 
houses, and incidentally discovers there a state of 
morals agreeable at once to the principles of Eliza- 
bethan Protestants and to the taste of Elizabethan 
audiences. This proceeding so excites the clergy 
that they compass the king's death. In Shakspere's 
play, this whole matter is compressed into two short 
passages : — 

1. 1 "K.John. Cousin, away for England ! haste before : 
And, ere our coining, see thou shake the bags 

Of hoarding abbots ; imprisoned angels 
Set at liberty : the fat ribs of peace 
Must by the hungry now be fed upon : 
Use our commission in his utmost force. 

Bast. Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back, 
When gold and silver becks me to come on." 

2. 2 "Bast. How I have sped among the clergymen, 
The sums I have collected shall express." 

The poisoning of the king, then, comes without very 
obvious cause. In this respect, the old play is the 
better. 

Nor is this the only instance in which Shakspere did 
not improve things. Shakspere's Constance, in gen- 
eral, however her rhetoric may be admired, certainly 
rants ; like so many passages in the earlier chronicle- 
histories, her long speeches belong rather to grand 
opera than to tragedy proper. The Constance of the 

i III. iii. 6-13. 2 IV. ii. 141-142. 



140 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Troublesome Raigne, on the other hand, though less 
eloquent, is more human. Compare, for example, the 
last appearance of Constance in the two plays : it is 
when her heart has been broken by the capture of 
Arthur. Here is her last speech in the Troublesome 
Raigne : — 

" Lewes. Have patience, Madame, this is chaunce of warre : 
He may be ransomde, we revenge his wrong. 

Constance. Be it ner so soone, I shall not live so long-" 

In King John this pathetic utterance is expanded 
into five speeches, which comprise above fifty lines of 
tremendous declamation, beginning : 1 — 

" No, no, I will not, having breath to cry: 
O, that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth ! 
Then with a passion would I shake the world ; 
And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy 
Which cannot hear a lady's feeble voice," etc. 

Whatever Shakspere's Constance may be at heart, 
she is not always so human in expression as the 
Constance of the Troublesome Raigne. 

In general, however, Shakspere's play is by far 
the better. To find such instances as we have 
just glanced at, one must seek. Taking the two 
plays as a spectator or a hasty reader would take 
them, they differ in effect much as Romeo and 
Juliet differs from Titus Andronicus. The old play 
has so little vitality of imagination that it is hardly 
ever plausible ; King John, on the other hand, is 

1 III. iv. 37 seq. 



KING JOHN 141 

full of touches which, when Ave once accept the 
old conventions, waken characters and scenes alike 
into something far nearer real life than we have 
yet found in chronicle-history. Character after char- 
acter emerges into consistent individuality. Best 
of all, of course, is the Bastard, who from a rather 
lifeless comic personage becomes one of Shakspere's 
own living men. Arthur, whose situation and fate 
recall those of the young princes in Richard III., 
is at once so human and so pathetic that many mod- 
ern critics are set to wondering whether the ten- 
der sense of boyish charm and parental bereavement 
hereby revealed may not have been awakened by 
the illness and death in 1596 of Shakspere's only son. 
Elinor is thoroughly alive, too ; l so is the intriguing 
Cardinal Pandulph ; 2 so is Hubert, whose scenes 
with the King and with Arthur remain dramatically 
effective; 3 so is King John himself; and so often, in 
spite of her rant, is Constance. In no earlier chronicle- 
history, for example, is there anything like so human 
a touch as in the scene where Elinor tries to entice 
Arthur from Constance : * — 

" Eli. Come to thy grandam, child. 

Const. Do, child, go to it grandam, child ; 
Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will 
Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig ; 
There 's a good grandam." 

In the Troublesome Raigne there is no hint of these 
speeches. They are all Shakspere's. 

1 See I. i. 2 See III. iv. 112 seq. 

8 III. iii. 19 seq. ; IV. i. 4 II. i. 159 seq. 



142 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

As concrete an example as any of what Shakspere 
has done in King John may be found in the very open- 
ing line. The Troublesome Raigne opens with a for- 
mal speech by Elinor : — 

" Barons of England, and my noble Lords ; 
Though God and fortune have bereft from us 
Victorious Richard scourge of infidels," etc. 

In general manner, this is very much like the opening 
of Richard II. : — 

" Old John of Gaunt, time-honour'd Lancaster," etc. 
Shakspere's King John, on the other hand, opens 
with an improved version of the forty-first line of the 
Troublesome Raigne, the line with which the action 
begins : — 

" Now say, Chatillon, what would France with us ? " 

By the eighth line, the passionate temperaments of 
John and of Elinor have been revealed by two charac- 
teristic outbursts 1 for which the Troublesome Raigne 
affords no suggestion. The example is sufficient : 
what has happened in King John is what happened 
in Romeo and Juliet. Creative imagination, to all 
appearances spontaneous, has made real, living peo- 
ple out of what had previously been stage types. 

In this very fact lies the reason why King John 
generally impresses one as more archaic, or at least 
as more queer, than Richard II. Such a phrase as 
Richard's 

" Old. John of Gaunt, time-honour'd Lancaster," 
i I. i. 5, 6. 



KING JOHN L43 

could never have been uttered by any real man ; 
such a phrase as John's 

"Now say, Chatillon, what would France with us \" 

might be uttered by anybody still. In Richard II, 
then, the consistent conventionality of everything 
makes us accept the whole play if we accept any 
part of it. In King John the continual confusion of 
real, human vitality with the old quasi-operatic con- 
ventions combines with the general carelessness of 
construction to make each kind of thing seem more 
out of place than it would seem by itself. Like any 
other transitional incongruity, King John is often 
harder to accept than the consistent conventions 
from which it departs. Its very excellences empha- 
size its faults and its oddities. 

In King John, then, we find Shakspere's creative 
energy awake, much as we found it in Romeo and 
Juliet ; and somewhat as we found it in the Midsum- 
mer NigMs Dream, in Richard III., and in Richard II. 
From the fact that King John, while in some respects 
as vital as any of these, is less careful, we may infer 
that this creative energy was growing more spontane- 
ously strong. Clearly, though, it has not here pro- 
duced a work which for ripeness of development can 
compare with the comedy or the tragedy already 
before us. To understand this slowness in the devel- 
opment of chronicle-history, we may conveniently 
turn to the next play in our study. If our chro- 
nology be right, King John belongs to the same period 
as the Merchant of Venice. 



144 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 



VII. The Mekchant of Venice. 

[The Merchant of Venice was entered in the Stationers' Register in 
July, 1598. It was twice published in quarto during 1600. It was 
mentioned by Meres, and one passage was perhaps paraphrased in a 
play called the Wily Beguiled, written in 1596 or 1597. 

The actual sources of the Merchant of Venice remain doubtful. The 
weight of opinion seems to hold that Shakspere rewrote an older play, 
now lost, which was probably founded on the Pecorone of Ser Giovanni 
Florentine In any event, the stories here combined are very old, and 
might have come to Shakspere 's attention in various ways. 

While the date of the play cannot be fixed with certainty, we may 
be fairly sure that it was written later than the plays we have consid- 
ered hitherto, and certainly before 1598. The weight of opinion seems 
to favor 1596] 

If the Merchant of Venice be nearly contemporary 
with King John, we can readily see why the advance 
made in the latter play is less marked than we might 
have expected ; for like the comedy and the tragedy 
which we guessed to have absorbed the energy which 
might have developed chronicle-history into some- 
thing riper than Richard III. or Richard II, the 
Merchant of Venice must have demanded, in the writ- 
ing, the better part of its maker's attention. The 
reason why King John remains archaic, then, we may 
guess to be that at the time of its writing Shak- 
spere's chief energies were directed elsewhere. 

For, whatever its origin, the Merchant of Venice is 
a permanently good play, still effective on the stage. 
A modern audience accepts it and enjoys it as heartily 
as ever. When we stop to consider the plot, to be sure, 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 145 

we discover a state of things which to say the least is 
surprising. We have been asked to believe that in 
ducal Venice, where business was doing on the Rialto, 
a respectable merchant, whom Tintoretto might have 
painted, made a serious contract with a Jewish neigh- 
bor, by the terms of which the Jew might legally 
murder him ; and that meanwhile a spendthrift Vene- 
tian gentleman borrowed from this same merchant a 
considerable sum in good Venetian coin, for the pur- 
pose of pressing his suit to an heiress, whose hand 
was to be given, as a matter of course, to whoever 
should select among three locked boxes the one which 
contained her portrait. Thus stated, the plot of the 
Merchant of Venice appears as childishly absurd as 
any in all nursery tradition. Thus stated, however, — 
though the statement is literally true, — it startles one 
a bit ; for, whether we see or read the pla} r , we have 
not only been asked to accept this nonsense ; we have 
unhesitatingly accepted it. Shakspere's art has made 
it plausible. 

The technical construction of the plot has of late been 
greatly admired. Without more accurate knowledge 
of the sources, to be sure, we cannot assert just what 
Shakspere did, and what was done by other hands. 
It seems probable, however, that to Shakspere's in- 
stinctive tact we owe the variation from the original 
plot, to which, so far as plot goes, the plausibility of 
the Merchant of Venice is chiefly due. In the older 
story, the lady of Belmont is a piratical and widowed 
siren, who persuades passing merchants to stake their 



146 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

vessels against her hand that they will possess her 
person, and then drugs them at supper. The substi- 
tution for this crude incident of the delicately fan- 
tastic story of the caskets is distinctly characteristic 
of Shakspere, among Elizabethan dramatists. Most 
of his contemporaries would greatly have relished 
the original situation. Shakspere, on the other hand, 
while never prudish and always willing to make licen- 
tious jokes, seems to have been remarkably free from 
a taste for unmixed obscenity. Compared with other 
men of his time, he shows decided purity of mind. 
Whether he actually made it or not, then, the change 
from the old plot is such as he would have been apt 
to make. 

It is this change, more than anything else, which 
makes the Merchant of Venice plausible. As an art- 
ist, of course, Shakspere's task was to distract atten- 
tion from the absurdity of his plot. This, we have 
seen, he accomplished. He did so largely by con- 
stantly keeping before his audience two separate 
though closely intermingled atmospheres : first, that 
of a romantic Venice such as Paul Veronese might 
have painted ; secondly, that of the still more ro- 
mantic, actually Utopian, Belmont, such as was in- 
volved in the story of the caskets. His composition 
here somewhat resembles that of the Midsummer 
Night's Dream. He adapts and develops for his 
purposes the conventional devices of an induction. 
Belmont is as unreal, though not so fantastic, as the 
fairy wood of Athens ; yet the unreality of Belmont is 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 147 

necessary to make plausible the romantic extravagan- 
ces of Venice. Shakspere begins, then, by a scene in 

Venice where everything might conceivably be true. 
Though a suggestion of Portia occurs in the first scene, 
there is no allusion to the caskets. Then the scene 
shifts to "Belmont, where Portia and Nerissa talk long 
enough to be readily accepted by any audience before 
the caskets are mentioned at all. With that mention 
begins the Utopian atmosphere. When we have ac- 
cepted that, the bond of the pound of flesh seems far 
more in the order of things than if we had come to it 
straight from real life ; yet even then it is reserved 
until the one hundred and fiftieth line of the following 
scene. From that time on, romantic Venice and 
Utopian Belmont are more and more intermingled, 
until in the last two acts one hardly knows which is 
which. The last act — a lyric epilogue which removes 
us from the excessive improbability of the trial scene 
— leaves us in a realm of Utopian fancy. Different as 
the effect of this romantic play is from that of the 
fairy comedy, the device by which it is secured is 
clearly the old induction-like device of leading us 
gradually from credible things to incredible. 

Nor is this the only instance of Shakspeare's charac- 
teristic economy of invention. In the Two Gentlemen 
of Verona 1 we remember among other effective things 
the catalogue of lovers discussed between mistress 
and maid ; the disguise of the heroine as a man, with 
consequent confusion of identity ; and the robust low 

1 See p. 94. 



148 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

comedy of Launce and Speed. In the Merchant of 
Venice all these are reproduced and developed. The 
change in the catalogue of lovers is a distinct improve- 
ment. In the first instance the mistress proposed the 
names and the maid commented on them, which was 
amusing but rude ; here the maid proposes the names 
and the mistress comments, which is both amusing 
and — at least according to Elizabethan notions — 
consistent with good manners. 1 Launce and Speed 
are reproduced in Launcelot Gibbo and his father, — a 
much better contrasted or at least more varied pair. 
The disguised heroine, on the other hand, is not only 
repeated but trebled. There are but three women in 
the Merchant of Venice; and all three assume male 
costume — as complete a concession to the taste of 
audiences as you shall find in all dramatic literature. 
What really makes the Merchant of Venice so per- 
manently effective, however, is not so much these well- 
tried devices, which after all prove chiefly that the 
play is constructed with careful theatrical intelligence. 
It is rather that along with this care appears the trait 
which we have clearly seen growing in Romeo and 
Juliet, in Richard III., and in King John. From be- 
ginning to end, the characters of the Merchant of 
Venice are so individual and so human that one's 
attention centres wholly on them. As readers or as 
spectators we become convinced that these people are 
real ; in consequence we accept everything else as a 
matter of course. Appreciating who and what the 

1 Cf. Two Gentlemen of Verona, I. ii. with Merchant of Venice, I. ii. 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 149 

characters are, we never stop to remark what absurd 
things they do. 

Of course, this profoundly human conception is pre- 
sented by conventional means as remote as possible 
from modern realism. More than two-thirds of the 
play is in verse, and much of the prose might as fairly 
be termed poetry. What this poetry expresses, how- 
ever, are simple human emotions. Take the very 
opening scene. In beautifully fluent verse, growing 
free from the affectations and the aggressive ingenuity 
of Shakspere's earlier work, we are reminded of the 
familiar fact that a man of affairs, rather deeply in- 
volved, gets very anxious without knowing quite why. 
The vigorous verse — a conventional means of expres- 
sion as remote as music from actual human utterance 
— we enjoy and forget. What we remember is that 
we have been put agreeably in possession of a state of 
things as true in Nineveh or in Wall Street as in com- 
mercial Venice, — a state of things incessant wherever 
men do business. Readers of Shakspere are apt to 
neglect, in discussing him, the obsolete conventionalism 
of his intrinsically noble and beautiful methods. Try 
to locate a blank-verse dialogue, with interspersed 
lyrics, in a modern stock-exchange, though, and you 
will find how differently Shakspere would have had 
to express himself had he written now. It is well 
for literature that he was free to use the grand con- 
ventions of Elizabethan style in setting forth his per- 
manently human conceptions of character. 

Just how these characters were conceived, of course, 



150 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

no one can assert. What one knows of the way in 
which fiction grows nowadays, however, would warrant 
at least a confident guess that they were conceived by 
no conscious process of psychologic analysis. Writer 
after writer, whose actual works are of the most vary- 
ing merit, agree that when they were writing the 
passages where their characters seem most alive, the 
characters generally got beyond their control, — - doing 
and saying things which the writers never intended. 
The plays we have lately considered, and many still 
to come, agree in suggesting that some such process 
of spontaneously creative imagination was more prob- 
ably at work in Shakspere's mind, than was any such 
consciously constructive method as people of small 
artistic experience are apt to infer from his results. 

Whatever his method, there can be no doubt that 
it resulted in a presentation of character which may 
fairly be called sympathetic. In this play we instinc- 
tively sympathize with everybody. Baldly stated, 
Bassanio's purpose of borrowing money to make 
love to an heiress whose fortune shall pay his debts, 
is by no means that of a romantic hero ; no more 
is Antonio's expectoratory method of manifesting 
distaste for the Hebrew race. As Shakspere puts 
these things, however, we accept them as unreservedly 
as we accept the graces of Portia. This heroine re- 
mains among the most charming in Shakspere, — 
an exquisite type of that unhappily rare kind of 
human being who is produced only by the union 
of high thinking and high living. She is so dis- 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 151 

fcinctly a person of quality that certain critics have 
surmised her to indicate a definite improvement in 
Shakspere's social position. What is perhaps more 
notable is that the conception of such a character in- 
volves in its creator a trait not needful to the concep- 
tion of the characters we have met hitherto, — at least 
a sympathetic understanding of the fascination which 
a charming woman, witli whose faults and errors you 
are unacquainted, can exercise. Whether anybody 
was ever in fact quite so altogether delightful as Portia 
remains in fiction, may perhaps be questioned. That 
many a worthy, and unworthy, woman has seemed so 
to adoring men is beyond doubt. About the only 
fault which one can fairly find with her is the fault 
she shares with all the other delightful people in the 
play. One and all, with whom our sympathy is clearly 
expected to go, treat Shylock, who nowadays is made 
almost equally sympathetic, in a manner which any 
modern temper must deem cruelly inhuman. 

Shylock, like everybody else in the play, is pre- 
sented as a human being. Distorted though hi? 
nature be by years of individual contempt and cen- 
turies of racial persecution, he remains a man. With 
the exception of his first " aside " in the presence of 
Antonio, 1 there is nothing to prevent us from taking 
his proposal' of the monstrous bond as something- 
like a jest on his own usurious practices ; and for 
all his racial hatred, he seems, like many modern 
Hebrews, anxious for decent and familiar treatment 

1 I. iii. 42-53. 



152 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

by the people among whom he lives. The treatment 
he receives from the very Christians he has obliged, 
who apparently decoy him to supper that his daughter 
may have a chance for her thievish escapade, natu- 
rally arouses all the evil in him. His revenge, if not 
admirable, is most comprehensible. Not so, to mod- 
ern feeling, is the contemptuously brutal treatment 
which he receives from the charming people with 
whom we are expected to sympathize fully. 

To understand this, at least as it was meant, we 
must forget the Nineteenth Century, and revive at 
least two dead sentiments which in the time of Eliza- 
beth still survived : the abhorrence of usury, and the 
abhorrence of the Jewish race which for centuries 
had been fostered by the Church. Usury, of course, 
remained in our own time, if indeed it be not 
still, a technical crime ; but except in some pal- 
pably monstrous form it has never impressed any 
sane living man as intrinsically evil. The only peo- 
ple nowadays who object to the practice of lending 
money at interest are such envious, hateful, and 
malicious folk as happen to have none to lend ; 
and generally even the taking of illegally high 
interest is regarded not as an essentially wicked 
act, but as a technically ; as a malum prohibitum, 
like smuggling, rather than as a malum in se, like 
robbery or murder. In Shakspere's time, this feeling 
was quite reversed ; people had been taught, by a 
thousand years of bad ecclesiastical economy, that 
whoever took interest on money was essentially as 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 153 

vile as a woman who should sell herself. To such 
a state of mind, Shylock's frank avowal that he takes 
interest 1 amounts to such a cynical profession of ras- 
cal ity as might now once for all repel sympathy from 
a vicious female character. Again, to the mediaeval 
mind — and in many respects the Elizabethan mind 
remained mediaeval — the Jew had been represented 
by centuries of churehly teaching as the living type 
of a race who had deliberately murdered an incar- 
nate God. Nothing less than a tremendous decay 
of dogmatic Christianity could possibly have permitted 
the growth of such humane sentiments toward Jews 
as generally prevail to-day. 

An imaginative effort to revive these old senti- 
ments, and thus to place ourselves in the position of 
an Elizabethan audience, helps us in some degree to 
understand the treatment of Shylock. As Shylock is 
now presented on the stage, however, his fate re- 
mains repellent — by no means the sort of thing we 
expect in a romantic comedy where virtue and vice 
get only their deserts. We can hardly help feeling 
that, despite his misfortunes and his faults, the 
grandly Hebraic Jew of the modern stage is treated 
outrageously ; yet we cannot feel that any such sen- 
timent could probably have been intended by an 
Elizabethan dramatist. To get at the bottom of the 
trouble, we must consider the stage history of " the 
Jew that Shakspere drew." 

No records of any performance of the Merchant of 

1 I. iii. 70-103 



154 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Venice have been discovered earlier than 1701. In 
that year a much altered version of it, made by the 
Marquis of Lansdowne, was produced in London. 
.The Shylock of this version was a broadly comic 
personage, with the huge nose and red wig of the 
traditional Judas. Forty years later, in 1741, Mack- 
lin revived Shakspere's play, and played Shylock 
in something resembling the modern manner. From 
that time to this, for above a century and a half, 
Shylock. has looked not like a Jew, but like a Hebrew. 
Very clearly, the Lansdowne tradition of broad, low 
comedy does not fit Shakspere's lines. Shylock, as 
a character, is a great, serious Shaksperean creation, 
which may be psychologically studied almost like a 
real human being. In this psychologically sympa- 
thetic age, we are given to this sort of study ; in 
literature, at all events, we consider rather what 
people actually are than what they look like. We 
neglect the various bodily forms in which character 
may manifest itself ; no cant is more popular than 
that which disdains appearances. Such cant was as 
foreign to Shakspere's time as any other form of 
sentimental philanthropy ; to an Elizabethan audi- 
ence, what looked mean was for that very reason 
essentially contemptible. Though no actual records 
support the conclusion, then, it seems more than 
probable that the real Shylock of Shakspere's stage 
combined the old traditions with the new, — that in 
make-up, in appearance, in manner, he was meanly 
" Jewy ; " while the tremendous creative imagina- 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 155 

fcion of the dramatist made him at heart sympatheti- 
cally human. Only under such circumstances could 
the Jate <>( Shylock be artistically tolerable. 

At all events, we have certain side-lights on the 
matter. Elizabethan England wns childishly brutal ; 
to-day, indeed, England sometimes seems more 
robustly unsympathetic than America. In actual 
lunacy, as the Changeling of Middleton will show, 
the England of Elizabeth saw not something horrible, 
but rather something conventionally comic — much 
as drunkenness is still held comic on the stage. 
In physical suffering it often saw mere grotesque 
contortion : witness the frequency of thrashing in 
old comedy. And even to-day, we are less sin- 
cerely beyond these things than we sometimes ad- 
mit. After all, what repels our sympathy in the 
Merchant of Venice is, not so much the actual treat- 
ment which Shylock receives as the grandly He- 
braic aspect of the personage whom we see receive 
it. Substitute for this figure a meanly cringing 
one, like the pimps and pawnbrokers who still com- 
pose the Jewish rabble, and, for all Shakspere's 
sympathetic psychology, Shylock will seem to get 
little else than his deserts. If this be true now- 
adays, it would be vastly more true in an age so 
foreign to our fine philanthropy as the brutally 
childish England of Elizabeth ; and some such child- 
ishly unfeeling conception Avas probably the real 
conception of Shakspere. As an artistic playwright, 
he could not have meant our sympathy to go with 



156 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Shylock ; yet no rendering of Shylock which makes 
the man look noble enough to be seriously sympa- 
thetic could ever have failed to command sympathy. 
There are few facts in the Elizabethan drama which 
more strongly emphasize the remoteness from our- 
selves not only of Elizabethan England, but also of 
Shakspere, the Elizabethan playwright. 

This view of Shakspere we must always keep in 
mind. As we come to these more lasting of his works, 
we are prone to forget it. In the Merchant of Venice, 
for example, we cannot but find, al^ng with what Ave 
have already glanced at, a constantly growing beauty, 
gravity, significance of mere poetry ; everywhere, in 
short, we feel Shakspere's grasp of life growing 
firmer, his wisdom deeper. We are tempted to guess 
that all this is not merely temperamental, but pro- 
foundly, philosophically conscious. We may generally 
be preserved from this temptation, however, by. such 
constant consideration of fact as in this chapter we 
have insisted upon. Among the hypotheses about 
this play, the simplest is this : A stage playwright 
of that olden time set himself the regular task of 
translating into effective dramatic form an archai- 
cally trivial old story. In the course of some nine 
years of practice he had so mastered his technical art, 
theatrical and literary alike, and had so awakened 
his own faculty of spontaneously creative imagina- 
tion, that he made his version of the story perma- 
nently plausible. He did more ; like any masterly 
artist, he introduced into his work touch after touch of 



THE TAMING OF THE SHREW 157 

the kind which makes works of art endlessly sugges- 
tive to ages more and more foreign, in thought and in 
feeling, to the age which produced them. The Mer- 
chant of Venice, then, is full of implicit wisdom, and 
beauty, and significance. That Shakspere realized all 
this, however, does not follow. Critics who declare a 
great artist fully conscious of whatever his work 
implies are generally those who least know how 
works of art are made. 



VIII. The Taming of the Shrew. 

[The Taming of the Shrew, in its present form, appeared first in the 
folio of 1623. There is no certain allusion to it at any earlier date. 

On May 2nd, 1 594, however, " A pleasant conceited history called 
the Tayrning of a Shroive " was entered in the Stationers' Register. 
This, which was published in quarto during the same year, is evidently 
the source, if not the original version, of the comedy finally ascribed to 
Shakspere. Who wrote the earlier play, how much of the final 
play may be pronounced Shakspere's, and to what period we may 
assign his work on it, have been much discussed with no certain result. 

It seems probable that the play as we have it is the work of several 
hands, revised by Shakspere somewhere about 1597.] 

If the Taming of a Shrew be Shakspere's, and such, 
at least to a considerable degree, we may assume it until 
further adverse evidence appears, it is in various ways 
different from any of his work which we have as yet 
considered. In the plays discussed in the last chap- 
ter, Shakspere seemed plainly to be trying his hand, 
with marked versatility, at various experiments. In 
the plays hitherto discussed in this chapter, he has 



158 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

seemed the master of bis vehicle, which with more or 
less artistic seriousness he has used to express the 
various moods into which his various subjects have 
thrown him. In this play one finds far less definite 
artistic motive than in those which we have lately 
read ; yet at the same time one finds such easy mastery 
of dramatic technique that the Taming of the Shrew 
remains among the most popular light comedies on 
the English stage. The play is a rollicking farce, so 
full of fun that, whether we read or see it, we accept 
its assumptions. When we stop to consider, we are 
surprised to find these involving that archaic view of 
conjugal relations which permits the husband, provided 
his stick be not too big, to enforce domestic discipline 
by whipping. All of which is at once less serious 
than the artistic plays we have dealt with, and more 
skilful than the experimental. 

One reason for this peculiar effect may lie in 
the fact that while most of the plays we have lately 
considered are almost certainly Shakspere's through- 
out, a large part of the Taming of the Shrew is thought 
to be by others. The old Taming of a Shrew was in 
all probability by somebody else," though by whom we 
cannot be sure. The passages about Bianca and most 
of the other minor characters are very likely by some 
intervening hand. This leaves to Shakspere him- 
self little more than the characters of Sly, Katharine, 
and Petruchio, with occasional touches throughout, — 
a state of things quite in accordance with the habitual 
collaboration of the Elizabethan theatre. 



THE TAMING OF THE SHREW 159 

Collaborative or not, however, the play has a dis- 
tinct effect of its own, which is by no means one of 
palpable patchwork. Its plot, to begin with, is swift 
and constant in action, and quite firm enough still 
to hold the attention of any audience. Even if the 
play were -not by Shaksperc at all, too, it contains 
one feature, unique in the work ascribed to Shaks- 
pere, but common in the drama of his time, which 
would be well worth our attention. This is the In- 
duction, which makes the main action a play within a 
play. Probably intended to be followed by improvised 
remarks between scenes, it was almost certainly in- 
tended to be balanced by a formal epilogue, or conclu- 
sion, in which Sly should fall asleep as lord, and wake 
up as tinker. Eccentric as such a device seems nowa- 
days, it is very suggestive of the conditions of the 
Elizabethan theatre ; it clearly exemplifies, too, the old 
convention which Shakspere developed into the artis- 
tic removal from real life of whatever in the Midsum- 
mer Night's Bream or in the Merchant of Venice was 
at first blush incredible. 

Inductions, interpolated comments by the person- 
ages thereof, and final conclusions, were common on 
the Elizabethan stage. A glance at the works of 
Greene or of Peele, or at Beaumont and Fletcher's 
Knight of the Burning Pestle, will show how general 
this sort of thing was. Impracticable on our own stage, 
it was exactly fitted to the conditions of the stage by 
which all of Shakspere's plays were produced. On 
either side of that stage, we remember, in the place now 



160 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

occupied by proscenium boxes, were seats where the 
more fashionable part of the audience sat, themselves 
a brilliant feature of the spectacle afforded to the more 
vulgar company in the pit or the gallery. Among these 
people of quality, the actors in the Induction could 
seat themselves while the main play went on, forming 
a natural system of intermediates between audience 
and play — actually part of both. When the audience 
was banished from the stage, such a proceeding- 
became impracticable. Finally the whole system 
merged into the rhymed prologue, which has dis- 
appeared in turn. It is interesting to us chiefly as 
a fresh reminder that the stage for which Shakspere 
made his plays was a totally different thing from 
the stage to which we are accustomed. 

In itself, to be sure, the Induction of the Taming 
of the Shrew is comical. So is the real play. Neither, 
however, possesses very individual traits ; both deal, 
after the manner of their day, with such incidents 
as compose the stock plots of Italian novels, at that 
time generally popular. 

To pass to the characters of the Taming of the 
Shrew, we find them, with three exceptions, merely 
conventional stage figures, of the sort which figured in 
Shakspere's earlier experimental work. These ex- 
ceptions are those on which we have already touched, 
— Sly in the Induction, and in the play Katharine 
and Petruchio. At least contrasted with the other 
characters, these seem almost Shaksperean in vitality. 
Certainly the queerly matched pair, for all their extrav- 



THE TAMING OF THE SHREW 161 

agance of humour, — in the Elizabethan sense of the 
word as well as in ours, — have a vitality which 
blinds us to the outrageously archaic state of their 
matrimonial relations, much as the vitality of the 
characters in the Merchant of Venice blinds us to the 
absurd conditions which surround them. It is idle to 
pretend, however, that even tbe most human charac- 
ters in the Taming of the Shrew come anywhere near 
the full vitality frequent in the better plays which 
have preceded. 

To a great extent, one may say the same of the at- 
mosphere. This is conventionally Italian, and plaus- 
ible enough for its purpose. Certainly, though, it is 
little more. Conceivably one might imagine in this 
environment the personages of the Two Gentlemen of 
Verona; by a stretch of imagination, one might possibly 
imagine here some stray personages from Romeo and 
Juliet or from the Merchant of Venice. Even these, 
however, would seem out of place ; while the person- 
ages of the Italian plays to come could no more appear 
in the Italy of Petruchio than Petruchio himself could 
appear unaltered in real life. 

Altogether, the more one considers this perennially 
amusing play, the less substantial one finds it; after 
all, it proves to be only a hack-made farce. It is 
a good farce, however ; though fun is the most evan- 
escent trait of any literary period, it is lastingly funny; 
and, considering that in all likelihood it proceeds from 
at least three distinct hands, it has surprising unity of 
diverting effect. Such unity of effect can hardly be acci- 



162 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

dental. There is no reason for not attributing it to 
the practised and skilful hand of Shakspere, revising 
and completing the cruder work of others. 

Pleasant as we may find all this, there is no deny- 
ing that the Taming of the Shrew, far from carrying 
comedy to a point beyond that which it had already 
reached in Shakspere's hands, is probably less effec- 
tive, — or at least less artistically serious, — than 
anything, of any kind, which we have considered 
since the Two Gentlemen of Verona. At first glance, 
this seems to count strongly against our chronol- 
ogy. To understand it, as a little while ago to 
understand King John, we must consider along with 
this rollicking farce the other work which modern 
chronology assumes to be contemporary with it. 
Here the contemporary play is Henry IV. 



IX. Heney IV. 

[For our purposes the two parts of Henry TV. may be considered 
together. 

The First Part was entered in the Stationers' Register on February 
25th, 1598. It was published during the same year, and was four times 
republished during Shakspere's lifetime. 

The Second Part was entered in the Stationers' Register on August 
23rd, 1600. It was published during the same year. No other quarto 
of it is known. There is reason to believe, however, that it was writ- 
ten before the publication of the First Part. In the quarto of 1600, for 
one thing, the name Old is prefixed to one of Falstaff's speeches, while 
throughout the First Part Falstaff's name is substituted for that of 
Oldcastle ; from which we may fairly infer that the Second Part was 
written before the change of name from Oldcastle to Falstaff occurred. 



HENRY IV 163 

The sources of both parts, as well as of Henry V., are Holiushed and 
an old play, published in 1598, called the Famous Victories of Henry 
the Fifth, etc. 

Meres mentioned Henri/ IV. as one of Shakspere's plays. Vari- 
ous other allusions to the play during Shakspere's lifetime indicate 
that the characters of Falstaff, Shallow, and Sileuce Mere generally 
familiar. 

Modern critics agree in conjecturally assigning the whole play to 
1597 or 1598.] 

Henry IV. may be assigned, more confidently than 
usual, to the years immediately following that to 
which we assigned the Merchant of Venice. To the 
earlier of these years we assigned the Taming of the 
Shreiv, which thus appears to be, like Richard III. 
or King John, the off-hand work of a moment when 
Shakspere's chief energies were absorbed by another 
kind of writing. Taken together, too, the years 1597 
and 1598 were undoubtedly those in which Shaks- 
pere's dramatic work began to be published, the years 
when arms were granted to his father, the years 
when he began to buy land, the years when Meres's 
allusion proves him to have become a recognized man 
of letters, and the years when the correspondence 
of Sturley and of Quiney shows that his fellow-towns- 
men thought him a person of consequence in London. 
We may fairly conclude, then, that Henry IV. was at 
least among the plays which he was making when, 
after ten years of professional work, his power was 
beginning to bring him both fortune and reputation. 

It.becomes interesting, then, to inquire what, if any, 
is the leading trait of this Henry IV, the play which 
more than any other marks the emergence of Shaks- 



164 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

pere into full contemporary recognition. This trait is 
plain. More than any of the plays we have considered 
hitherto, Henry IV. is completely plausible. When- 
ever or wherever one read it, one puts it down with a 
sense that one has been in contact with actual life. 
This total impression absorbs all memory of the me- 
dium by which this actual life has been brought to us. 
We forget details, of construction, of style, even of 
character ; we are conscious only of a profound im- 
pression that we have seen real people, who have 
done real things. 

Surprising as this effect is, a little closer inspection 
of the text makes it more so still. On the titlepage 
of the earliest quarto, as well as in the Stationers' 
Register, the name of Falstaff is quite as conspicuous 
as that of the King. " With the humorous conceits 
of Sir John Falstalffe," reads the titlepage ; and the 
line is purposely so removed from the preceding ones 
as instantly to attract any eye. Clearly, Henry IV 
has two parts, throughout : the first deals with such 
actually historical matter as became familiar in the 
earlier chronicle-histories ; the second is an independ- 
ent comedy of manners, with no "historical basis at 
all. These two parts are united by little more than 
the figure of the Prince — to say the character of the 
Prince were almost misleading, for his conduct and 
speeches in the historical scenes differ completely from 
his conduct and speeches in the comic. What is more, 
the two parts differ similarly throughout : the histori- 
cal preserves with little change the long declamatory 



HENRY IV L65 

speeches, and the highly conventionalized incident, of 
the old chronicle-history ; the comic part is almost 
literal in its humorous presentation of low London 
life. Such incongruity, to be sure, was no new thing; 
we find something like it in the Famous Victories, 
something like it, too, in the Troublesome Raigne ; and 
the old miracle-plays are full of it. The surprising 
thing about Henry IV. is that its incongruity, unlike 
that of these older plays, troubles us no more than the 
constant incongruity of real life. When not disposed 
to be very critical, we accept it without question. 

As we begin to study the play, one reason for this 
plausibility transpires. Marked as the incongruity of 
the two parts at first appears, it proves, on inspection, 
to be a matter of little more than diction. Inimi- 
tably human as Falstaff's scenes seem to a reader, 
they are not composed in a manner which could be 
effectively presented on a modern stage. Like the 
scenes where the King figures, they are rather a series 
of long speeches, not interwoven but strung together, 
than a strictly dramatic composition. In our time 
they lend themselves more readily to reading than to 
acting. The infrequency of Falstaff on the modern 
stage is probably due not so much to the fact that few 
can act him, as to the fact that in order to be act- 
able under our present dramatic conditions, his lines 
would have to be rewritten. From end to end, in 
short, Henry IV. is composed not as a modern play, 
but as a typical old chronicle-history. 

What makes it so plausible, then, is not that it 



166 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

discards old conventions. Nobody anywhere, for ex- 
ample, is more frankly rhetorical than the King ; l 
Hotspur dies 2 as blatantly as John of Gaunt died ; s 
even Falstaff himself and the Prince declaim with a 
disregard of action as complete as Mercutio's when he 
introduces his lyric description of Queen Mab. In 
mere form, Henry IV is as conventional as it can be. 
What makes it seem otherwise is that here, as in the 
Merchant of Venice, these obsolete conventions are 
used, with the confidence of full technical mastery, 
to express conceptions of human character which 
throughout are consistently vital. In our sense of 
this great feat of creative imagination, we never stop 
to consider the means by which it is accomplished ; 
we forget the vehicle, we are aware only of the con- 
ceptions it conveys. Ultimately, then, the lasting dif- 
ference of effect between the Merchant of Venice and 
Henry IV resolves itself into the accidental differ- 
ence between their subjects. What the living people 
in the Merchant of Venice do proves on consideration 
childishly incredible ; what the living people do in 
Henry IV. is substantially historical. It is the fun- 
damental truth of chronicle-history combining with 
Shakspere's intense power of creative imagination, 
already declared in fantastic comedy, which makes 
Henry IV. a new thing in literature. 

A new thing in literature it undoubtedly is, though ; 

i E. g. 1 Hen. IV I. i. ; 2 Hen. IV III. i. 1-31. 
2 1 Hen. IV. V. iv. 77-86. 
8 E. II. II. i. 



IIK.XUV IV 167 

and a thing- not destined to be fully developed until 
our own century. Its deliberate intermingling of 
vigorous fiction with the general outline of acknowl- 
edged history, reawakens into actual life a long- 
past world. The archaism of its form and manner 
allies it to the older work of Greene, of Peele, of Mar- 
lowe ; it remains chronicle-history. The full vitality 
of its conception allies it rather to the novels of Walter 
Scott ; chronicle-history though it be, it is at the same 
time our first, and by no means our least, example of 
historical fiction. 

In the presence of so great a feat of creative imagi- 
nation as this, — a feat which gives us a kind of art 
hitherto unknown, — we naturally feel ourselves eager 
to seek, if we may, for some glimpse of how the feat 
presented itself to the man who performed it. On 
this point there is something resembling evidence. 
Certainly the most notable character in Henry IV. 
is Falstaff, and there remain indications of how 
Falstaff grew. 

The original name of this character is known to 
have been Oldcastle. The change of name is thought 
to have been made in deference to members of the 
Oldcastle family, 1 who naturally did not relish the 
revival of their ancestor in precisely this form. 
Though Falstaff as we have him, then, be a pure fic- 
tion, at least his name — and in some slight degree 
the tradition it stood for — originally had historic 
basis. Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, was a gen- 

1 See the epilogue to 2 Henry IV. 



168 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

tleman of the time of Henry Y., whose liberal prin- 
ciples got him into trouble with the Church ; the King 
abandoned him to the mercy of the Church, which 
burned him at the stake for such heresy as later 
would have been called Protestantism. In Elizabeth's 
time, accordingly, Oldcastle was a Protestant, or rather 
a Puritan, hero, duly commemorated at great length in 
Foxe's Booh of Martyrs. A passage from this narra- 
tive tells how when he was bidden to confess himself 
to the Church, before going to trial and execution, he 
refused to make any other confession than a public 
one to God : l — 

"And with that he kneeled down on the pavement, 

holding up his hands towards heaven, and said: * I shrive 

myself here unto thee, my eternal living 

Lord Cobham J . 

coufesseth him- God, that in my frail youth I offended thee, 

self unto God. ' J . J . ' 

Lord! most grievously m pride, wrath, and 
gluttony, in covetousness, and in lechery. Many men 
have I hurt in mine anger, and done many other horrible 
sins; good Lord, I ask thy mercy.' And therewith weep- 
ingly he stood up again, and said with a mighty voice: 
' Lo, good people ! lo ; for the breaking of God's law and 
his great commandments, they never yet cursed me, but, 
for their own laws and traditions, most cruelly do they 
handle both me and other men ; and therefore, both they 
and their laws, by the promise of God, shall be utterly 
destroyed.' (Jer. ii.)." 

From his own words, then, we may believe that 
the Puritan hero, in his unregenerate state, had been 

1 Foxe: Acts and Munuments : Loudon, 1841: iii. 330. 



HENRY IV 169 

guilty of pride, wrath and gluttony, covetousness and 
lechery, hard lighting, and many other horrible sins. To 
speak very generally, so had the Falstaff of Henry IV 
In Shakspere's time Oldeastle was a familiar figure 
on the stage. There still exists an old play bearing 
his name, 'which was once ascribed to Shakspcre. 
This play, to he sure, commonly presents him as a 
Protestant hero ; now and then, however, he disguises 
himself, to escape persecution, in a manner which 
must have been comic. There are various traces 
elsewhere of a broadly comic Oldeastle in some old 
play, — for example, an allusion to " the rich rubies 
and incomparable carbuncles of Sir John Oldcastle's 
nose." In the Famous Victories, too, Oldeastle appears 
among the boon companions of the riotous Prince, 
and makes one speech which suggests Falstaff's 
temper : * 

" If the old king my father was dead," 

says the Prince, 

" We would all be kings." 

" Hee is a good olde man/' 

answers Sir John Oldeastle. 

" God take him to his mercy the sooner." 

What reminds one of Falstaff in that speech is not 
only its temper, but the religious allusion. In his 
second speech, for example, Falstaff says, — 

i Facsimile of Qu. 1598, p. 17. 



170 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

" God save thy grace, — majesty I should say, for grace thou wilt 
have none." x 

In the same scene 2 is this more familiar speech, 

" Now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of 
the wicked." 

Later in the play 3 comes his well-known utterance, 
" Thou knowest in the state of innocency Adam fell ; and what 
should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villany ? " 

And in the wonderful tale of his death 4 the Hostess 
says, 

" He was rheumatic, and talked of the whore of Babylon; " 
to which the Boy adds that 

" a' saw a flea stick upon Bardolph's nose, and a' said it was a 
black soul burning in hell-fire." 

Shakspere's Falstaff, in short, talks a great deal of 
Puritan cant. 

From these facts, and from the well-known ten- 
dency of artistic folk to satirize lax or erratic godli- 
ness, there is reason to infer that the traditional 
Oldcastle of the stage, and so the original conception 
of Falstaff, was such a satire on Puritanism as one 
finds in Middleton's Chaste Maid in Cheapside, in 
Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, in Hudibras, or in 
the Reverend Mr. Stiggins of the Pickwick Papers. 

Clearly, however, tine Falstaff of Henry IV. is no 
such personage as this. How the change came, we 
can never quite know ; but whoever is familiar with 

1 1 //. IV. I. ii. 18. 2 Line 105. 

3 III. iii. 185. 4 Henri/ V. II. iii. 40-43. 



HENRY IV 171 

the way in which good fiction grows, can make a 
pretty sure guess. In a little play lately written for 
private acting there was a character so consistent as 
to excite the admiration of the actor who played it. 
A certain subtle slowness of mind underlay every 
speech; and at last, when the personage grew warm 
with wine, his drunkenness was of a kind which in- 
volved this mental habit. The actor thereupon com- 
plimented the author on his skilful psychology ; when 
presently it appeared that the author had not even 
been aware that his personage got drunk at all — 
he had only felt sure that of course when the fellow 
in question spoke he must perforce speak the words 
written down. This whole process of remarkably 
consistent creation, in short, had been completely un- 
conscious. The case is typical. Imagine it to be as 
true of Falstaff as it is of the smaller creatures whose 
growth we may still watch in detail. Intended for a 
burlesque Puritan, the fat knight begins to speak and 
move of his own accord. By an inevitable process of 
spontaneous growth, he gathers about himself a new, 
fictitious world, more real if anything than the histor- 
ical world amid which it is placed. As must constantly 
be the case, in short, with the work of artists whose 
creative imagination is fully alive, the conception out- 
grows its origin ; it develops not into a conventional 
type, but into an individual character of unique vitality. 
Long before Falstaff was himself, Oldcastle and Puri- 
tanism must have been forgotten ; until, at last, with 
complete truth as well as manners, Shakspere could 



172 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

write that " Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not 
the man." 1 

Whatever his process of growth, Falstaff is cer- 
tainly among the most human figures in English liter- 
ature. What is more, the world surrounding him, 
and particularly the Eastcheap tavern, are more like 
actual every-day life than almost anything else in 
Shakspere. What Shakspere generally expresses is 
profound knowledge of human nature ; here we have 
also a vivid picture of Elizabethan manners. In this 
aspect, the Falstaff scenes of Henry 1 V. have an added 
interest, historical and biographical alike. As has been 
said before, there was no Bohemia in Shakspere's Eng- 
land : whoever was not regular in life had to be hand 
and glove with thieves and cut-throats ; and, to go no 
further, the known history of Greene and of Marlowe 
is enough to prove that the environment so vividly set 
forth in the tavern scenes of Henry IV. is that from 
which proceeded the early masterpieces of the Eliza- 
bethan drama. In Shakspere's own life, too, we have 
seen that Henry IV. marks the moment of emergence 
from Bohemian obscurity into permanent personal 
respectability. The inference is fair, then, that this 
great spontaneous picture of the cradle of our stage 
marks the time when Shakspere himself had grown 
beyond it, yet was still near enough to realize all its 
features. Only at such moments, perhaps, are com- 
plete conceptions of actual experience possible. 2 

Falstaff and his world, however, by no means ex- 

1 2 //. IV. Epilogue. * j§ ee p , 43. 



HENRY IV 173 

haust the creative energy of Henry IV. In another 
way, the same trait so pervades all the historical pas- 
sages that, to a degree rare anywhere, we can con- 
stantly feel the great movement of historical forces. 
For one thing, mark how this play and Richard II 
are bound together by the lines : — 

" Northumberland, thou ladder by the which 
My cousin Bolingbroke ascends my throne." 1 

The example typifies how all the evil which broke 
loose in Richard's time is in the air. Men here are 
in the hands of fate, working itself out on a scale far 
beyond any human lifetime. In private affairs, too, 
as well as in public, one feels forces beyond human 
control ; a student of heredity, for example, might 
note with approval how clearly the sons of Boling- 
broke display, each in his own way, the lax sense 
of honor which marked the youth of their father. 
It is the Bolingbroke blood which makes Prince John 
of Lancaster equivocally entrap his enemies, 2 and 
which makes the Prince of Wales, for all his ultimate 
heroism, so cruelly untrue to his boon companions. 3 
Henry IF., in short, can properly give rise to endlessly 
grave, and perhaps pregnant, philosophizing. 

So may actual life. What conclusions may be drawn 
concerning the ultimate meaning of actual life may 
hardly be discussed here. One thing, however, is cer- 
tain. The nearer any great work of art approaches 

1 /?. //. V. i. 55 ; 2 Hen. IV. III. i. 70. 

2 2 II. IV, IV. ii. 3 I II. IV. I. ii. 219 scq. 



174 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

not the details, but the proportions of actual life, 
the nearer the imagination of its maker approaches 
in its scheme the divine imagination which has 
made our infinitely mysterious world, the more end- 
lessly suggestive that work of art must always be. 
To the artist, however, all this meaning is often as 
strange as to one who meets for the first time the 
work in which it lies implied. What the artist knows 
is often no more than a blind conviction that thus, 
and not otherwise, the mood which possesses him 
must be expressed. Those who find in the great 
artists consciously dogmatic philosophers are gener- 
ally those who are least artists themselves. 

In Henry IV. we have sought out traits which, more 
than probably, Shakspere himself never realized. 
What he must surely have realized need have been no 
more than this : Setting to work at a stage-play, of 
the old chronicle-history school, he found his power of 
creative imagination so spontaneously alert that by the 
mere process of letting his characters do and say what 
they inevitably would, he made the most successful 
chronicle-history which had as yet appeared on the 
English stage. That he had done more, — that he had 
changed chronicle-history into historical fiction, and 
that he had created characters which should become 
the household words of the world, — he need never 
have guessed. A cool study of the play as it stands 
makes this opinion the most probable. The Second 
Part seems more hasty than the first; it was very 
likely hastily made to meet a popular demand which 



THE MERRY WIVES OE WINDSOR 175 

the First had excited. Nowadays, too, as we have seen, 
both parts so abound with the obsolete conventions of 
chronicle-history that they would surely act ill. As 
stage-plays, then, — and for stage-plays Shakspere 
surely meant them, — they are things of the past. So 
constantly vital is the imagination which pervades 
them, however, that as readers we of later days never 
think of the dead conventions at all. We accept them 
for just what they are, — only means of expression ; 
by their means we come face to face with the imagi- 
native conceptions of a master's mind. In our sense 
of the ultimate human plausibility of these conceptions, 
the fruit of a union between creative imagination and 
a solid basis of historical fact, we properly lose all 
sense of the means by which this end is wrought. 



X. The Merry Wives of Windsor. 

[The Merry Wives of Windsor was entered in the Stationers' Regis- 
ter on January 18th, 1602. It was published, in a very imperfect 
quarto, during the same year. The relation of this quarto to the final 
version of the play has been much discussed; probably, though it 
professes to be a work of Shakspere as it was performed " before her 
Majestie," it is pirated and incomplete. There was another quarto in 
1619. The tradition that the play was written in a fortnight at the 
express command of the Queen, who desired to see Falstaff in love, 
cannot be traced beyond 1702. Nor can the comparative chronology 
of this play and Henry V. be definitely settled. Mr. Fleay believes the 
Merry IE;i>esto be a revision of an old play called the Jealous Comedy. 

The plot appears to be based on certain novels translated from the 
Italian, to be found in Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library. 

A conjectural date, commonly accepted, is 1598 or 1599.] 



176 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Whatever the origin of the Merry Wives of Wind- 
sor, and whatever the history of its final text, the play 
is clearly related to both Henry IV. and Henry V. 
On the titlepage of the quarto this fact appears at a 
glance : — 

" A Most pleasaunt and excellent conceited Comedie, of Syr 
John Falstaffe, and the merrie Wives of Windsor. Entermixed 
with sundrie variable and pleasing humors, of . . Justice Shal- 
loiu, . . With the swaggering vaine of Auncient Pistoll, and 
Corporall Nym." 

Falstaff, of course, appears in both parts of Henry 
IV ; Shallow and Pistol in the Second Part ; Pistol 
again, and Nym, in Henry V. The conclusion that 
the Merry Wives must therefore be subsequent to 
Henry V., however, is not necessary ; for as Henry V. 
was certainly published in 1600, two years before 
the quarto of the Merry Wives, the mention of Nym 
on this titlepage may merely be a reference to the 
general popularity of the character. Which version 
of Nym was first written, nobody can tell. The one 
thing of which we may feel sure is that all these 
characters were popular. 

Accordingly there has now and again been effort 
seriously to identify the personages in the Merry 
Wives of Windsor with those who bear the same 
names in the chronicle-histories. This effort has 
met with small success. While Falstaff, and Bar- 
dolph, and the Hostess, and Pistol, and the rest re- 
main the same people in scene after scene of Henry 
IV. and Henry V, they seem somehow different 



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'SJ130A* UOJ O^JX .olliq;OUlOS Sl!A\. ffupiJOfif 

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%X[Su .ibou o.ioqAiAuu oq ASojouo.up .mo ji -qSnouo si 
;obj siq; ;nq ' oo; 'ajiqAYinjoui raoq; jo sosdraqS uooq 
OAuq o.ioqj, 'isof s c .moqvj s^ao'j m osoq; poip;o>[S 
ipuojju puq ojodsjnujg 'ipiQ put; 'ouifesog 'uoaig 
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-ouog jo s.iopn.i'oip oq; opnpui uoi;sonb in sjaud oq; 

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gq; o; onSojo.id 9q; in pgsirao.id pnoj jo op; oq; mo.ij 
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ipoqXnc uuq; AjpiAiA o.ioiu jbj sjuoso.id oq 'A"iqd oq; 
jo 0.100 oq; Ajpo.i si ipupv 'oipmqQ pin? o.iojj jo a\io;s 
oq; : s;re.i; osoq; jo q;oq SAU)qs oq (Juiiftojg %noqy 
opy i[onj^ iq -oai;oojjo A*ip?Di;'eurcjp poAO.id puq 
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's.io;otfj-eqo 'ouioopAi uoi;i;odo.i oq; 05[T3ui 0; uoi^iauA 
qSnouo ;snf q;iAv ';Bodoj 0; Avoq'Xjpuooos puu fsoo.mos 

31I3JSNVIIS IMV1TIIAV g6T 



81 

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gq^ q^i^ 'ajo^s gjoqAY gqq. ^ou si 'jgAgAioq 'ssgu^BgAY 
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snoiAqo q^iAV A^qiqi^dmoom Ji9q^ uo spugdgp :pgjjg 
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JO S9^^S O^Ul 9JU}t3U JO S9SS9U5[B9A\ OISUU^Ul A*q pgjm§ 

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jo 6891 J° ^l^ puiSiJO oqj ^011 si '^1 gA'Bq gA\ sb 'isoj 

86T oxihxom iiioay oav Honi^ 



THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR 177 

in the Merry Wives. The truth is probably that, as 
they appear in this jolly comedy, they are identical 
with their other selves only in a very general way, 
which freshly emphasizes the archaism of Shakspere's 
theatre. Nowadays, when Thackeray, or Balzac, or 
Anthony Trollope introduces in one book a character 
which has appeared in another, we expect to find the 
various aspects of the character consistent ; each 
imaginary individual is assumed to have the same 
sort of identity which real people have. In liter- 
ature of an older kind, on the other hand, there are 
what we may call generic personages : the Harlequin 
and the Pantaloon of pantomime, for example ; the 
Sganarelle of Moliere ; the Lisette and Frontin of 
Eighteenth Century comedy ; the Vice of the old 
English Moralities. Wherever these personages ap- 
pear, their make-up is the same, and so are their 
general traits. Over and over again, however, they 
appear,, under incompatible circumstances ; and all 
one. ever expects is that in any given play, or what 
else, the personage shall be for the moment consist- 
ent. It is in this old, conventional way, rather than in 
the modern, literal sense, that the personages of the 
Merry Wives of Windsor are identical with those of the 
chronicle-histories. Their identity is one of type, of 
aspect, of name, not of history ; it is an identity which 
belongs to a far earlier period of serious literature than 
our own. Nowadays one finds such types chiefly in the 
detectives and the desperadoes of penny dreadfuls. 
This generic quality of the characters in the Merry 
12 



178 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Wives of Windsor is somewhat obscured by their 
decided individuality, by the vigorous humor of their 
conception, and by the thoroughly English quality of 
their environment. To take a single example, the 
school-boy who makes a mess of his Latin grammar l 
is a perennially funny sketch of adolescent English- 
speaking flightiness : whoever has had pupils must 
always relish it. The way in which the oddities of 
foreign speech are burlesqued, too, in Sir Hugh Evans 
and Doctor Caius, 2 makes the other personages 
seem the more English by contrast. This solitary 
comedy in which Shakspere lays his scene in England, 
seems as thoroughly national as any of the chronicle- 
histories. True to English life in so many details, 
then, and with characters as vital and as jolly in con- 
ception — for all their extravagance — as anything we 
have met in comedy, the Merry Wives always seems 
peculiarly English. 

Very clearly, however, when we stop to consider 
the swift, intricate, amusing plot, we find there several 
traits which are not English at all. In the first place, 
the general scheme of the plot is conventionally Italian, 
and the underlying assumption — that an attempt at 
seduction is capital fun — is far more congenial to 
Continental than to plain English ways of thought. 
In the second place, the whole action tends toward the 
masque of the fairies in the fifth act, itself at once a 
revival of the device which had already proved effec- 
tive in Love's Labour 's Lost and in the Midsummer 

1 IV. i. 2 E.g. III. i. 



THE MERRY "WIVES OF WINDSOR 170 

Night's Dream, an admirable little type of what the 
Elizabethan masque was, and a dramatic convention 
as remote from real English life as is the ballet of the 1 
modern stage. The Merry Wives of Windsor, in short, 
is not really English at all ; it is rather a vigorous 
translation into English terms of an essentially for- 
eign conception, accomplished with a skill rivalled 
only in Box and Cox, — perhaps the one modern 
adaptation from the French which does not betray 
its foreign origin. 

As a broadly humorous presentation of convention- 
alized characters, conducting themselves — for all the 
English flavor of their environment — in a manner 
substantially agreeable rather to Continental than to 
English ideas, the Merry Wives of Windsor seems a far 
less serious work than either Henry IV. or the riper 
comedies and tragedy which have preceded. It may be 
taken, to be sure, a little more seriously than we have 
as yet taken it. For one thing, in spite of considerable 
disguise and confusion of identity, the stock devices of 
the older comedy, the fun here turns chiefly on an 
equally lasting and far more human device, — on the 
self-deception of the fatuous Falstaff, and of the jealous 
Ford. Self-deception, as funny a thing as mistaken 
identity, has its roots not in the accidents but in the 
essential weakness of human nature ; we shall find it 
later the chief comic motive of Shakspere, and later 
still a tragic one, too. In the second place, the main 
situation of the plot here — the effort of a man of 
rank to seduce the wives of plain citizens — was used 



180 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

by other Elizabethan dramatists ; but almost always 
to the discredit of the citizens. Middleton's Chaste 
Maid in Cheapside will serve to illustrate the regular 
treatment of the situation. In the Merry Wives of 
Windsor, as distinctly as in the Marriage of Figaro, 
the gentleman gets the worst of it. One can hardly 
believe, however, that this jolly, off-hand play is funda- 
mentally, like that of Beaumarchais, a serious satire. 

The most reasonable view of the Merry Wives of 
Windsor, perhaps, is that which groups it with the 
Taming of the Shrew. In substance not artistically 
serious, not instinct — like the Midsummer Night's 
Bream or the Merchant of Venice — with definite 
artistic motive, it differs from the earliest comedies by 
being in treatment not experimental but masterly. 
The man who wrote it thoroughly knew his trade. 
To all appearances, it belongs, in Shakspere's work, 
to the period when, by an unparalleled feat of creative 
imagination, he developed the old chronicle-history 
into permanently plausible historical fiction. If we 
regard it as the comparatively thoughtless side-work 
of a moment when his full energy was busy elsewhere, 
we shall understand it best. 



XL Henry V. 

[Henri/ V., together with three other plays, was entered in the 
Stationers' Register on August 4th, 1 600, with a note that all four were 
"to be staied." Quite what this note means nobody has settled. 
Henry V. appeared in a very imperfect form iu 1600. There were 



UI.XKV V 181 

other imperfect quartos in 1602 and 1608. The full text, as we have it, 
first appeared iu the folio of 1623. 

The sources of the play are identical with those of Henry IV. 

From the fact that Meres, who mentioned Henry IV. iu 1598, did 
not mention Henry V., it lias been inferred that Henry V. is subse- 
quent to 1598. As it was published iu 1G00, a reasonable date for it 
seems 1599. ' This is confirmed by lines 29-34 of the Prologue to Act \ '., 
which apparently refer to the expedition of Essex to Ireland, — 
15 April-28 September, 1599. J 

Identical in origin with Henry IV., and so far as 
the actually historical scenes go with Richard II, 
too, Henry V. differs from both. It certainly lacks 
the poetic completeness of Richard II., and just as 
certainly the inevitable plausibility of Henry IV. 
This may be partly due to the accident that this play 
deals particularly with the battle of Agincourt, which 
in Elizabeth's time preserved such pre-eminence of 
patriotic tradition as in the last century surrounded 
the name of Blenheim, and in our own time still sur- 
rounds the names of Trafalgar and of Waterloo. 1 
Whoever should deal with Agincourt in 1599 could 
not help trying to produce a patriotic effect. 

A mere effort to produce a patriotic effect, dramati- 
cally conceived, however, would not necessarily have 
resulted in just such an effect as that of Henry V. 
Somehow, whether one see the play or read it, one is 
conscious of a strongly hortatory vein throughout. To 
infer from this that the writer was a deliberate and 

1 See particularly Drayton's ballad : — 
" Fair stood the wind for France," etc. 
This was the model for Tennyson's " Charge of the Six Hundred." 



182 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

sincere preacher is not necessary ; one can hardly 
avoid the inference, however, that, as an artist, the 
writer of Henry V. had chiefly in mind some other pur- 
pose than a purely dramatic. From beginning to end 
he seems trying not merely to translate historical mate- 
rial into effective dramatic terms, but also to present 
that material in such a manner that his audience shall 
leave the theatre more enthusiastically English than 
they entered it. As a man he need not therefore have 
been particularly patriotic ; as an artist he seems cer- 
tainly to have been sensitive to the hortatory nature 
of his subject. 

In that case, we may see at once why the effect of 
Henry V. is often less satisfactory than that of the 
earlier chronicle-histories. Hortatory purpose is as 
legitimate for an artist as any other. The most fit- 
ting vehicle for such a purpose, however, is certainly 
the vehicle which involves the least possible suggestion 
of artificiality or insincerity. Sermons in prose, pas- 
sionate lyrics in verse, are the normal forms of horta- 
tory literature. The stage, on the other hand, can 
never free itself from an aspect of artificiality. When 
you see a play, however much it move you, there is 
no avoiding knowledge that the actors are pretend- 
ing to be somebody else than themselves. All this, 
though perfectly legitimate in their art, is fatal to 
any lasting personal faith in their hortatory utter- 
ances. If the stage be a teacher, it may teach only 
by parable. 

An indication that the trouble with Henry V. lies 



HENRY V 183 

in this incompatibility of artistic purpose and artistic 
vehicle may be found in the Chorus r 1 — 

" Pardon, gentles all, 
The flat unraised spirits that have dared 
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth 
So great an object : can this cockpit hold 
The vasty fields of France 1 or may we cram 
Within this wooden O the very casques 
That did affright the air at Agincourt 1 
O, pardon ! since a crooked figure may 
Attest in little place a million ; 
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, 
On your imaginary forces work." 

Such Hues as these, which fairly typify the senti- 
ment of all six utterances of the Chorus, really 
show as acute a sense of the material limitations 
surrounding an Elizabethan play as is shown by Ben 
Jonson's well-known prologue to Every Man in His 
Humour. 2 In this Jonson declares that as a dramatic 
writer he disdains to 

"purchase your delight at such a rate 
As, for it, he himself must justly hate : 
To make a child, now swadled, to proceede 
Man, and then shoote up, in one beard, and weede, 
Past threescore years : or with three rustie swords, 
And helpe of some few foot-and-halfe-foote words, 
Fight over Yorke, and Lancaster's long jarres : 
And in the tyring-house bring wounds, to scarres. 

1 Prologue to Act I. 8 seq. 

2 This play was acted in 1598. The earliest publication of the pro- 
logue, however, was in 1616. Cf. p. 14. 



184 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

He rather prayes, you will be pleas'd to see 

One such, today as other playes should be ; 

When neither Chorus wafts you ore the seas ; 

Nor creaking throne comes downe, the boys to please." 

The difference between these two comments on 
stage-conditions — comments which if the prologue 
to Every Man in His Humour be as old as the play 
are almost exactly contemporary — lies in the fact 
that while Jonson condemns the limitations of his 
theatre, Shakspere laments them. Generally, with 
purely dramatic purpose, Shakspere appears frankly to 
accept the conditions under which he must work. In 
Henry V., he professes throughout that they bother 
him. So far as it goes, this very fact tends to show 
that his artistic purpose was not merely dramatic. 

The general impression made by the play confirms 
this opinion. From beginning to end, Henry himself 
is always kept heroically in view ; he is presented in 
the exasperating way which makes so ineffectual the 
efforts of moralizing scribblers, dear to Sunday-school 
librarians. Of course he is not such an emasculate, 
repulsive ideal as you find in the group headed by Mr. 
Barlow, and by Jonas, the hired man of the Hollidays. 
Changing what terms must be changed, however, he is 
not so foreign to them as he seems ; he is rather a moral 
hero than a dramatic. For all his humanity, you feel 
him rather an ideal than a man ; and an ideal, in virtues 
and vices alike, rather British than human. He has 
sown conventional wild oats ; he has reformed ; he is 
bluff, simple-hearted, not keenly intellectual, coura- 



HENRY V L85 

geous, above all a man more of action than of words. 
The Shakspere who propounds such an ideal, then, 
is limited more profoundly than by mere stage con- 
ditions ; throughout his conception he reveals the 
peculiar limitation of sympathy which still marks a 
typical Englishman. In the honestly canting moods 
which we of America inherit with our British blood 
we gravely admire Henry V. because we feel sure 
that we ought to. In more normally human moods, 
most of us would be forced to confess that, at least 
as a play, Henry V. is tiresome. 

If it be a dull play, however, it is just as surely the 
dull play of a great artist ; it is full of excellent detail. 
In the distinctly historical parts, the excellent detail 
is chiefly rhetorical ; as such, it is almost beyond 
praise. The eloquence of Henry's great speeches x 
everybody recognizes. Perhaps an even more notable 
example of Shakspcre's now consummate mastery of 
style may be found in the Archbishop of Canterbury's 
exposition of the Salic law. 2 The passage — one of 
the kind which sometimes makes superficial readers 
marvel at the learning of Shakspere — actually states 
the law in question, along with many historical details, 
about as compactly as any lawyer could have stated it 
under Queen Elizabeth. Besides this, the passage is an 
admirable example of that very difficult kind of sono- 
rous declamation which depends for its effect on the 

1 I. ii. 259 seq. ; II. ii. 79 seq.; III. i. ; IV. i. 247 seq., 306 seq. ; 
IV. iii. 20 seq. ; etc. 

2 I. ii. 33 seq. 



186 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

skilful use of proper names. A glance at Holinshed 1 
will show where all the learning came from, and all 
the proper names. Compare, for example, these two 
versions of the historical statement made in lines 
69-71. Holinshed writes : — 

' ' Hugh Capet, who usurped the crowne upon Charles 
duke of Loraine, the sole heir male of the line and stock of 
Charles the great ; " 

and here is Shakspere's rendering of the words : — 

" Hugh Capet also, who usurp'd the crown 
Of Charles the duke of Lorraine, sole heir male 
Of the true line and stock of Charles the Great." 

The art by which a dull legal statement is converted 
into a piece of vigorously sounding rhetoric is all 
that Shakspere has added. The changes of phrase are 
incredibly slight, incalculably effective. They mark 
as clearly as any single passage in Shakspere the 
moment when his command of style was perhaps most 
easily masterly ; for they translate the original prose 
into a blank verse which is free alike from the monot- 
ony and the excessive ingenuity of his earlier days, 
and from the condensation, the lax freedom, and the 
overwhelming thought of his later. 

The excellence of detail in the comic scenes of 
Henry V. is perhaps more notable still. While in 
substance all the comic characters are what an Eliza- 
bethan would have called " humourous," and what we 

1 The passage in question is conveniently accessible in Rolfe's edition 
of Henry V. 



HENRY V 187 

should now call " eccentric comedy," they are almost 
all human, too. Comic dialect, to be sure, already 
proved effective in the Merry Wives of Windsor, is 
repeated in the speeches of Jainy, Macmorris, and 
Fluelleu ; 1 -repeated, too, is the broad burlesque on 
the excesses of Elizabethan ranting which pervades 
the speech of Pistol everywhere. For all this conven- 
tional humor, however, one grows to feel of the comic 
characters in Henri/ V, as of all the characters in 
Henry IV, that these are real people. 

Perhaps the most subtly artistic touches of all are 
the repeated ones, each in itself slight, by which the 
crew of Falstaff are completely removed from any 
relation with the King himself. To appreciate this 
we must revert for a moment to Henry IV. Com- 
monly one thinks of Falstaff, Prince Hal, and the 
rowdies of the Eastcheap Tavern, as a constantly inter- 
mingled company. A little scrutiny shows that the 
Prince is actually familiar with only two, — Poins and 
Falstaff himself. Gadshill, the regular highwayman, 
appears only in the First Part of Henry IV.; Poins 
disappears with the second scene of the Second Part, 
— the scene in which we first see Pistol ; Pistol and 
the Prince never meet at all in Henry IV. ; and Bar- 
dolph is throughout a person of lower rank, Falstaff s 
attendant. The only character with whom a violent 
break is necessary proves to be Falstaff. However he 
may morally deserve his fate, one cannot help feeling 
that the King cruelly kills his heart. Clearly, then, 

1 See III. ii- 79 seq. 



188 WILLIAM" SHAKSPERE 

to have introduced Falstaff in a play whose artistic 
object is the apotheosis of Henry would have been a 
blander; and to have put his death on the stage, how- 
ever agreeable to the theatrical custom of the time, 
could not have been less than shocking. To tell the 
story of his last hours as Shakspere has told it is to 
do a thing which no writer ever surpassed. If one 
were asked to name a single scene where Shakspere 
shows himself supreme, one would often be disposed to 
name the third scene of the second act of Henry V. 
Falstaff once removed, the fate of the others comes 
with no disturbing sense of the King's breach of friend- 
ship. How Shakspere managed it, a single example 
will suggest. In Holinshed we are told that 
" a souldiour tooke a pix out of a church, for which he was appre- 
hended, & the king not once remooved till the box was restored, 
and the offendor strangled." 

This incident Shakspere has developed into our last 
glimpse of Barclolph, involving the quarrel between 
Pistol and Fluellen, 1 on which turns so much of the 
comic action towards the end of Henry V. And so, 
by touch after touch, none of which we feel at the 
moment, the King at last is left alone in his glory. 
In the wonderful third scene of the second act there 
is a famous phrase which illustrates the condition in 
which Shakspere's text has come down to us. 2 

" For after I saw him fumble with the sheets," says the Hostess, 
" and play with flowers and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew 
there was but one way ; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and 
a' babbled of green fields." 

i III. vi. 21-62. 2 Lines 14-18. 



IIKXRY V 189 

In the folio this last phrase appears in a form which for 
above a century was unintelligible, — "a Table of green 
fields." Theobald suggested " a' babbled " instead of 
" a Table." The suggestion was in such harmony 
with the spirit of the scene that it has been unani- 
mously accepted. Whether Shakspere actually wrote 
it, however, no one can ever be sure. 

What one can be sure of, on the other hand, is that 
Shakspere never saw a published copy of Henry V. 
which compared either in fulness or in accuracy with 
the folio of 1623. Such serious discussion of his art 
and his purposes as we have just emerged from is apt 
to mislead. To think of Shakspere's plays except as 
literature is a bit hard ; yet nothing is more certain 
than that even so serious a work as Henry V. could 
never have appeared to him as anything but a play 
made for the actual stage. In our study of his artis- 
tic development, then, we must finally regard it as a 
stage play. 

Thus it takes its place as chronologically the last 
of the chronicle-histories, and in the whole scheme of 
chronicle-history as the link between the series which 
begins with Richard II and that which ends with 
Richard III. In some details of style superior to any 
of the others — for nowhere is Shakspere's declama- 
tory verse more simply, fluently sonorous ; and no- 
where are his comic scenes more skilfully touched, or 
much better phrased in terms both of speech and of 
action — it somehow lacks both the completeness of 
Richard II. and the pervasive plausibility of Henry 



190 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

IV In other words, while Henry IV showed a de- 
velopment of chronicle-history analogous to that of 
comedy in the Midsummer Night's Bream, or that of 
tragedy in Romeo and Juliet, Henry V. shows rather 
a stagnation than an advance of creative energy. 
Compared with the plays we have lately considered 
it lacks spontaneity, it grows conscious. If it stood 
by itself, we might almost infer that the artistic im- 
pulse which has underlain Shakspere's work ever 
since the Midsummer Nights Dream was beginning 
to flag. To correct this inference we must look at 
other work attributed to the same time. As more 
than once before, a comparative weakness in one kind 
of writing will prove to indicate no more than that 
Shakspere's best energies were devoted to another. 



XII. Much Ado About Nothing. 



[Much Ado About Nothing was another of the plays entered " to be 
staied " in the Stationers' Register, on August 4th, 1600. It was again 
entered, unconditionally, on August 23rd, 1600; and was published in 
a very complete quarto during the same year. 

The sources of the serious plot — the loves of Hero and Claudio — 
are to be found in Ariosto and in Bandello. In the Fourth Canto of 
the Second Book of the Faerie Queene, Spenser tells the story senti- 
mentally. The comic parts of the play, including Benedick, Beatrice, 
and Dogberry, appear to be of Shakspere's invention. 

As the play was not mentioned by Meres in 1598, and existed in 1600, 
it may, with some confidence, be assigned to 1599. Mr. Fleay, however, 
eagerly believes it to be a revision of the Love's Labour's Won, men- 
tioned by Meres. This view is not generally accepted.] 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING 191 

In the sense that it is a permanently significant 
work of art, whose maker seems thoroughly to have 
known both what he wished to do and how to do it, 
Much Ado About Nothing is a masterpiece. Its total 
effect is as plausible as that of Henry IV. ; forgetting 
the means by which characters and incidents are pre- 
sented, one instinctively thinks of them as real. The 
plot has definite unity ; the characters, all of first-rate 
individuality, live in a world which seems actual, and 
constantly express themselves in a style unsurpassed 
for firmness and decision. All this technical power, 
too, is used here for a more definite artistic purpose 
than has generally been perceptible in the earlier 
work of Shakspere; the mood which underlies Much 
Ado About Nothing, we shall see by and by to be 
more profound than the moods we have met hitherto. 
Finally, whether you see the play or read it, you can 
hardly avoid feeling that it has the inevitable ease of 
mastery. 

Off-hand, such ease and completeness in any work 
of art seem inborn. Nothing is further from one's 
instinctive impression than the real truth, that they 
can be attained only by years of preliminary practice. 
We have already followed Shakspere's career long 
enough, however, to assure ourselves that Much Ado 
About Nothing was produced, at least in its final form, 
only after above ten years of patient stage-craft. Dur- 
ing these years he had thoroughly learned two things : 
first, how to translate into effective dramatic terms 
the crude material which he found in his narrative 



192 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

sources ; and secondly, how to repeat, with just enough 
variation to make the repetition welcome, characters, 
scenes, situations, what not, which in previous plays 
had proved dramatically effective. In Much Ado 
About Nothing he shows both of these traits : the 
story of Hero and Claudio, which is really the core of 
the play, he presents far more vividly than anybody 
else ; and by way of contrast and amplification he adds 
to it, from his own previous stage-work, the story and 
the characters of Benedick, Beatrice, and Dogberry. 
The greater vitality of these has perhaps resulted, after 
all, in a distortion of the effect he first intended, anal- 
ogous to the possible distortion of Romeo and Juliet 
from the tale of feud promised in the prologue to the 
tragedy of youthful love known to us all. In each 
play, your attention ultimately concentrates elsewhere 
than at first seemed probable. Each alike, however, is 
masterly, just as each is notable for the firmness 
with which it sets forth the parts of itself which are 
peculiarly Shakspere's. In this case, as we have seen, 
the parts in question include the characters of Bene- 
dick, Beatrice, and Dogberry. Under the names of 
Biron, Rosaline, and Dull, Shakspere had already 
sketched these in Love's Labour 's Lost. There have 
been glimpses of them meanwhile, too ; but this fact 
is enough. If our chronology be anywhere near right, 
the interval between the first conception of these char- 
acters and their final presentation in Much Ado About 
Nothing was something like ten years. 

Of course we must remember that Love's Labour'' s 



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MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING 193 

Lost, as we have it, is not the original play of 1589 or 
so, but a revision of it for performance at court in 
1597. Whatever alteration of phrase and finish may 
then have been made, however, we felt that we might 
fairly assume the main outline and the chief traits 
of style in Love's Labour' 's Lost to belong to the 
beginning of Shakspere's career. A comparison of 
Biron and Rosaline with Benedick and Beatrice will 
strengthen that conclusion. The former pair seem set 
forth with no deeper consciousness of their value than 
would come from a sense of the undoubted effect their 
clever tit for tat must make on an audience. Bene- 
dick and Beatrice, on the other hand, are not inde- 
pendent stage characters ; for all their wit and sparkle, 
they have their places in a great, coherent comedy 
which, in its entirety, expresses a definite view of 
human nature. 

In this view of human nature there are two ele- 
ments. The artist who conceived such a work as 
Much Ado About Nothing must in the first place have 
been keenly sensitive to the inexhaustible power of 
deceiving themselves possessed by human beings. 
Benedick, Beatrice, Claudio, Dogberry alike are be- 
guiled by intrinsic weaknesses of nature into states of 
mind and lines of conduct whose admirable dramatic 
effect depends on their incompatibility with obvious 
facts in possession of omniscience and the audi- 
ence. This fundamental understanding of a human 
weakness, however, is not the whole story. With the 
help of a little deliberate rascality, the weakness in 



194 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

question beguiles the wisest and the wittiest of people 
into a situation which no unaided acts of theirs could 
prevent from resulting tragically. What does prevent 
this result is that, by mere chance, the dullest, stupid- 
est creatures imaginable happen to stumble on the 
real facts. In thus presenting the keenest wit as 
saved from destruction only by the blundering of 
boors, Shakspere displays a sense of irony lastingly 
true to human experience. 

Self-deception, the first of these traits, we met in 
the Merry Wives of Windsor. By itself it would dis- 
tinguish these two comedies from the earlier ones, 
whose fun is based on the far less plausible and not 
deeply significant, though perennially amusing, device 
of mistaken identity. The older comedies are chiefly 
theatrical ; these become human. When to self-decep- 
tion is added the sense of irony which pervades Much 
Ado About Nothing we are face to face with another 
kind of literature than the old. The old was inspired 
chiefly by observation of the whims of audiences, and 
by skilful observance of literary and theatrical tradi- 
tion ; this, for all its technical skill, seems inspired 
rather by knowledge of human nature. 

Technically, at the same time, Much Ado About 
Nothing displays the traits to which we are already ac- 
customed. The vitality of creative imagination which 
enlivened and even veiled the absurdities of the Mid- 
summer Night' 's Dream and the Merchant of Venice, and 
which brought Henry IV. out of chronicle-history into 
historical fiction, pervades this more profound play. 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING 195 

The constant economy of needless invention, too, 
which is so marked a trait of Shakspere, appears in 
various ways. We have already touched on some of 1 
the obvious relations of this play to Love's Labour 's 
Lost and on the fact that its motive of self-deception 
was the motive also of the Merry Wives of Windsor. 
Those who know Shakspere well must already have 
remarked that self-deception is the motive of much 
work still to come, — of the misadventures of Mal- 
volio, for example, of the jealousy of Othello and of 
Leontes, of the infatuation of Lear. They must have 
noticed, too, that Don John comes midway between 
the Aaron of Titus Andronicus and Iago. Not quite 
so clearly, perhaps, they may have observed that the 
loss and recovery of Hero have much in common with 
the situation of ^Emilia in the Comedy of Errors as 
well as with that of Juliet ; while clearly all these are 
by and by to be revived in Thaisa and in Hermione. 
One might thus go on long. 

It is better worth our while, however, to consider 
the trait in which Much Ado About Nothing is su- 
preme, — the wit of the chief personages. Of course 
the humor of Dogberry and Verges, despite its 
breadth, is lastingly funny ; but certainly it is not 
unique. Elsewhere in Shakspere, and — to go no 
further — in Mrs. Malaprop, one finds plenty like it. 
The equally lasting wit of Benedick and Beatrice, on 
the other hand, is unsurpassed, and one may almost 
say unrivalled, in English Literature. For this amaz- 
ing development of wit, a trait which at first thought 



196 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

seems perhaps the most spontaneous in all human 
expression, we have already seen causes. From the 
beginning of Elizabethan Literature whoever had 
written had been constantly playing on words and 
with them. Fantastically extravagant as such verbal 
quibbles generally were, they resulted in unsurpassed 
mastery of vocabulary. Combine such mastery of vo- 
cabulary with an instinctive sense that words are only 
the symbols of actual thoughts, and your quibbler or 
punster becomes a wit of the first quality. We have 
seen that such a sense of the identity of word and 
thought characterized Shakspere from the beginning. 
The lasting vitality of his wit, then, as well as of his 
wisdom, is perhaps traceable to the insatiable appe- 
tite for novelty of phrase which pervaded his public. 
As in his earlier work, so even in Much Ado About 
Nothing one may fairly doubt whether the man him- 
self, accepting his temperament among the normal 
conditions of life, would generally have distinguished 
between his own efforts, which resulted in lasting lit- 
erature, and those of his fellows, which resulted chiefly 
in ingenious collocations of words. Like the rest, he 
probably strove merely to put words together in a 
fresh way. As the years passed, however, he grew 
less and less able to conceive a word as distinct from 
a concept ; by 1600, then, his peculiar trait had so 
developed that, by merely trying to make his phrases 
as fresh as possible, he might unwittingly have set 
forth the ultimate wit, and the profoundly human 
characters of Benedick and Beatrice. 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING 197 

For, witty as they arc, Benedick and Beatrice are 
human too. One thinks of them generally together, 
as an inseparable pair, equally human, equally delight- 
ful. To attempt in any way to distinguish between 
them, then, is perhaps fantastic. On the whole, how- 
ever, there are touches in the character of Beatrice 
which seem to mark her as the more sympathetically 
conceived. When Hero is accused, for example, her 
conduct is the very ideal of feminine intensity. Her 
first outbreak, 1 — 

" Why, how now, cousin ! wherefore sink you clown? " 

may best be read as an exclamation not of 
terror but of indignant remonstrance. Her " Kill 
Claudio ! " 2 so much admired by Mr. Swinburne, 
is more in keeping with that conception. Although 
these speeches have no gleam of wit, they are better 
than witty ; they express just such impulsive purity of 
nature as an ideal woman should possess. This heroic 
trait of Beatrice arouses Benedick to a line of action 
which in turn makes him heroic. Ultimately one 
grows to think of Much Ado About Nothing as group- 
ing its whole story about the heroine Beatrice. 

To guess that such vitality of conception was in- 
spired by a living model is to start on an endless 
round of conjecture. One may safely say, however, 
that, even more than Juliet or Portia, Beatrice is a 
real, living figure. Coming after them, then, she re- 
veals in Shakspere a growing sense of what a fascinat- 

1 IV. i. 111. 2 IV. i. 291. 



198 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

ing woman really is, or rather of how a fascinating 
woman presents herself to a worshipping man. Such 
a man, enthralled by the outward spell, of look, of 
action, of speech, instinctively surrounds it with imagi- 
nary graces of nature, which make his mistress for the 
moment divine. What Beatrice expresses is such an 
ideal of womanhood as this, — womanhood as seen by a 
man who feels all its charm, who is not yet practised 
enough to know its vices, who has not yet dreamed of 
the disenchantment and the satiety of possession. 

Whatever the origin of Beatrice, we have fair 
ground for believing that in 1599 Shakspere was dis- 
posed to idealize character. This inclination showed 
itself in his heroic treatment of Henry V. In that 
play he failed to produce a satisfactory effect, partly 
because there his ideal was a bit didactic, and partly 
because, for all its vigor, the play did not seem so 
alive with creative imagination as those which had 
just preceded. Much Ado About Nothing, almost cer- 
tainly of the same year, shows us why. In 1599 
Shakspere's creative imagination, diverted once more, 
left chronicle-history where he found it; but turning 
afresh to comedy, carried comedy to its highest 
point. 



AS YOU LIKE IT 199 



XIII. As You Like It. 

[As You Like It was entered, along with the two preceding plays, 
" to be staied " in the Stationers' Register, on August 4th, 1600. It 
was not printed till the folio of 1623. 

Its source is a novel by Thomas Lodge, called Rosalynde, Euphues 
Golden Legacie, etc., published in 1590. 

From the circumstances of its entry, together with internal evi- 
dence, such as the quotation of a line from Marlowe's Hero and Lean- 
der, 1 published in 1598, its date has generally been coujecturally placed 
in 1599 or 1600.] 

As You Like It, beyond question among the most 
popular of Shakspere's plays, differs from Much 
Ado About Nothing rather in substance than in man- 
ner. Just as masterly, just as far from experimental, 
it is distinctly less significant. Much Ado About 
Nothing, as we have seen, expresses a mood which, at 
any period of history, must sometimes possess any 
thoughtful observer of actual life ; As You Like It, 
for all its delicate, half-melancholy sentiment, is in 
substance purely fantastic. 

Its completely fantastic character, to be sure, is 
somewhat concealed by the art with which the play is 
composed. Like the Midsummer Night's Dream and 
the Merchant of Venice, it begins with the device — 
very probably suggested by the conventional old in- 
ductions — of presenting a scene and a state of things 

* III. v. 83 ; and see p. 60. 



200 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

about mid-way between real life and the impossible 
fantasies into which it must lead us. In this case the 
device has proved so generally successful that no 
comment on As You Like It is more frequent than 
ardent admiration for the open-air quality of the 
forest-scenes. 

To declare so general an opinion mistaken would be 
stupid ; whoever fails to share it might better lament 
his own lack of perception. Unquestionably, how- 
ever, there are moods in which the rhapsodic delight 
conventionally felt in the forest breezes of Arden sets 
one to doubting whether those who feel it have ever 
been much nearer nature than the foot-lights. In 
such moods, Arden seems as fantastically artificial as 
the background of any pseudo-classic eclogue or oper- 
atic ballet ; and wonderful chiefly because everybody 
does not instantly perceive its trees and stones and 
running brooks to be paint and pasteboard. What 
Shakspere has realty done in As You Like It is to 
adapt for the stage a kind of story essentially differ- 
ent either from the statements of fact which gave 
him material for his chronicle-histories, or from the 
rather bald plots of old Italian novels which generally 
provided his material for comedy or tragedy. Lodge's 
Rosalynde is a commonplace example of the more 
elaborate novel of early Elizabethan Literature, the 
kind of fiction represented in prose by Sidney's 1 
Arcadia and Lyly's Luphues, and in poetry by the 
aimlessly bewildering plot of the Faerie Queene. Such 
fiction still delights imaginative children ; but to 



AS YOU LIKE IT 201 

grown folks of our day, who become critical, it gen- 
erally seems tediously trivial. From this original 
come the fantastic plot of As You Like It, the general 
atmosphere, and the great tendency to incidental mor- 
alizing. Beautifully phrased, this moralizing, even 
in As You Like It, is really almost as commonplace 
as that of Euphues itself. The Duke, and Jaques, 
and Touchstone alike spout line after line of such 
graceful platitude as Elizabethans loved, and people 
of our time generally find tiresome. After all, there 
is a case for who should say that the open air and the 
wisdom of As You Like It differ less than their ad- 
mirers would admit from the same traits in the novel 
of Lodge, where they are palpably make-believe. 

This is not to say that As You Like It remains no 
better than the lifeless old story from which it is 
taken. The fact that, while Lodge's Rosalynde is 
dead and gone these three centuries, Shakspere's 
Rosalind survives among the lasting figures of Eng- 
lish Literature, would instantly prove the error of any 
such pert statement as that. What makes the differ- 
ence, however, is not that Shakspere suddenly becomes 
a poet of Nature ; it is rather the same trait which 
made the difference between Romeo and Juliet and 
the poem of Arthur Brooke, between the Merchant of 
Venice and the fantastic nursery stories on which it is 
based, between Henry IV. and the lifeless pages of 
Holinshed. By this time, Shakspere's creative imagi- 
nation was so easily alert that he could hardly present 
a character in any play without making it seem hu- 



202 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

man. In As You Like It, from beginning to end, 
and despite an amount of operatic convention which 
finally brings us unremonstrating to the little Masque 
of Hymen, 1 the people are real. They are people, too, 
of a specific romantic kind, who need to keep them 
alive not the actual breezes of any earthly forest, but 
an atmosphere where every breath of air feeds a 
gentle sentiment of romantic love, with melancholy 
and gayety alike close at hand. When people live 
for us as Rosalind lives, and Celia, and Orlando, and 
the Duke, and Jaques, and Touchstone, and Audrey, 
we accept them as facts ; and with them we accept 
whatever else their existence involves. What makes As 
You Like It live, then, is the spontaneous ease with 
which Shakspere's creative imagination translated 
conventional types into living individuals. 

There are plenty of traces, at the same time, of the 
conventional conditions from which and amid which 
these individuals emerged into the full vitality we 
recognize. After all, the very open-air atmosphere is 
only a fresh whiff of what had proved theatrically 
effective in Love's Labour 's Lost and the Midsummer 
Night's Dream. The disguise of Rosalind is a fresh 
and far more elaborate use of the stage device which 
had proved popular in the Two Gentlemen of Verona 
and the Merchant of Venice. The clown, Touch- 
stone, is a curiously individual development from a 
very old stage type. In the Moralities and the In- 
terludes, the most popular character was the Vice, 

1 V. iv. 114 seq. 



AS YOU LIKE IT 203 

a personage in many respects analogous to the 
Clown of pantomime or of the modern circus. In 
Shakspere's comedies, from Dull, and the Dromios, 
and Launce, to Dogberry and Verges, there has been 
a steady line of conventional buffoons. Here, and 
later, these two conventions seem for a while to merge 
with the historical tradition of court-jesters — in 
Shakspere's time still actual facts — ■ in a new con- 
vention, different enough from all its sources to seem, 
for centuries, a thing apart. Touchstone and his 
fellow-clowns, too, are really more conventional than 
even this view of them would at first suggest. They 
are not an essential part of the plays where they ap- 
pear ; without them everything might fall out as it 
falls. What they provide is only a comic chorus, 
whose essentially amusing character makes it prob- 
ably the best theatrical vehicle for such incidental 
moralizing as is always relished by an English public. 
Among the characters in As You Like It, if any 
one emerges from the group as notably sympathetic, 
it is certainly Rosalind ; if any two, certainly Rosa- 
lind and Celia. Perhaps this may be only because 
they were meant to be charming, and have generally 
proved so. If we consider, however, that in Much 
Ado About Nothing Beatrice seemed heroine more 
distinctly than Benedick seemed hero, and if we con- 
sider, too, that as far back as the Merchant of Venice 
Portia stood out more conspicuously ideal than any- 
body else, we have in this constant prominence of 
idealized women a suggestion that, when these come- 



204 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

dies were making, Shakspere was sensitive to femi- 
nine fascination, and showed no traces of sensitiveness 
to the mischief which such fascination involves. To 
draw from this suggestion any inference as to the cir- 
cumstances of his private life would certainly be un- 
warrantable. As a fact in his artistic development, 
however, as an evidence of the phases of human emo- 
tion to which for the moment he was most disposed, 
the suggestion is worth remembering. For the whole 
charm of As You Like It is based on a sentiment 
involved in this very prominence of bewitching wo- 
men. No one could have made such a comedy who 
was not keenly alive to the delights of virginal, roman- 
tic love. Rosalind, in short, is the heroine of such 
delicately sentimental comedy as expresses the lighter 
phase of the mood whose tragedy is phrased in Romeo 
and Juliet. The charm of such impressions in real life 
lies in their half-apprehended evanescence. 1 These 
are not real women ; they are such women as a ro- 
mantic lover dreams his mistress to be. From all 
dreams men must wake. From such as these, the 
wakening is terribly painful. There are men, though, 
who feel that the memory of the dream is worth all 
the pain of the waking. 

Such romantic sentiments as this, however, perhaps 
tend to mislead us in our study. As You Like It is 
no impassioned, reckless outburst of romantic enthusi- 
asm. Such an outburst would have been foreign to 
Shakspere at any time. Over and over again, his work 

i See p. 126. 



TWELFTH NIGHT 205 

expresses moods which none but a passionate nature 
could feel. In his expression of such moods, how- 
ever, he was always a cool, sane artist. All that we 
have touched on is in As You Like It. To complete 
our impression, though, we must remember that in 
As You Like It, too, is the well-known expression of 
a temper which underlies much of Shakspere's art at 
this period : 1 — 

" All the world 's a stage, 
And all the men and women merely players: 
They have their exits and their entrances ; 
And one man in his time plays many parts, 
His acts being seven ages," — 

which need not be detailed. 



XIV. Twelfth Night. 

[Iii the diary of John Manningham, of the Middle Temple, Barrister- 
at-Law, for February 2nd, 1 602, occurs this passage : " At our feast 
wee had a play called Twelve Night, or what you will, much like the 
commedy of errores, or Menechmi in Plautus, but most like and neere 
to that in Italian called Ingannl. A good practise in it to make the 
steward beleeve his lady widdowe was in love with him, by counter- 
fayting a letter as from his lady, in generall termes, telling him what 
shee liked best in him, and prescribing his gesture in smiling, his ap- 
paraile, &c, and then when he came to practise making him beleeve 
they tooke him to be mad." 

The source of the main plot may have been some Italian comedies, 
and very probably Barnaby Riche's Apolonius and Silla, published in 

1 II. vii. 139 seq. 



206 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

1581. The episode of Malvolio, Sir Toby, etc., seems to be original 
with Shakspere. 

As Twelfth Night was not mentioned by Meres, it is confidently 
assumed to belong somewhere between September, 1598, and Feb- 
ruary, 1602.] 

To many of us nowadays, no play of Shakspere's 
is more constantly delightful than Twelfth Night. 
Whether you read it or see it, you find it thoroughly 
amusing ; and you are hardly ever bothered by the 
lurking consciousness, so often fatal to the enjoyment 
of anything, that you really ought to take this matter 
more seriously. Rather, if you let yourself go, you 
feel comfortably assured that here, at any rate, is 
something which was made only to be wholesomely 
enjoyed. If you enjoy it, then, you have not only had 
a good time ; you have the added, more subtle satis- 
faction of having done your duty. 

To dwell on Twelfth Night in detail, then, would be 
unusually pleasant. For our purposes, however, which 
are merely to fix its place, if we can, in the artistic 
development of Shakspere, we need only glance at it ; 
and in a study which perforce grows so long as this, it 
were unwise to dwell on anything longer than we need. 

The one fact for us to observe, and to keep in mind, 
is the surprising contrast between the free, rollicking, 
graceful, poetic Twelfth Night which any theatre-goer 
and any reader of Shakspere knows almost by heart, 
and the Twelfth Night which reveals itself to whoever 
pursues such a course of study as ours. Taken by 
itself, the play seems not only admirably complete, 



TWELFTH NIGHT 207 

but distinctly fresh and new, — spontaneous, vivid, full 
of fun, of romantic sentiment, and of human nature, 
and above all individually different from anything 
else. This Illyria, for example, is a world by itself, 
whither one might sail from the Messina of Benedick 
and Beatrice, or perhaps travel from the Verona of 
Romeo and Juliet, to find it different from these, much 
as regions in real life differ one from another. For 
all the romance and the fun of Twelfth Night, its 
plausibility is excellent ; and so its individuality seems 
complete. 

As everybody can feel, all this is lastingly true. 
What is also lastingly true, yet can be appreciated 
only by those of us who have begun to study Shaks- 
pere chronologically, is that, to a degree hitherto un- 
approached, what is distinct and new in Twelfth Night 
is only the way in which the play is put together. 
From beginning to end, as we scrutinize it, we find it 
a tissue of incidents, of characters, of situations which 
have been proved effective by previous stage experi- 
ence. Confusion of identity, for example, almost as 
impossible as that of the Comedy of Errors, reappears 
in Sebastian and Viola. Viola herself, once more the 
boy-actor playing the heroine unhampered by skirts, 
revives Julia, and Portia, and Ncrissa, and Jessica, 
and Rosalind — with them foreshadowing Imogen. 
Like Julia in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, Viola, 
disguised as a page, carries to her rival the messages 
of her own chosen lover. 1 The tale of shipwreck, 
again, revives the similar narrative in the Comedy of 

1 I. v. 178. Cf. Two Gentlemen of Verona, IV. iv. 113. 



208 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Errors ; 1 the friendship of Antonio for Sebastian less 
certainly revives the analogous friendship of the other 
Antonio for Bassanio in the Merchant of Venice, while 
from the Comedy of Errors, once more, comes the 
business of the purse. 2 In Malvolio, as we have seen 
before, 3 self-deception appears as distinctly as ever ; 
while, at least on the stage, the plot of Sir Toby, Sir 
Andrew, and Maria against Malvolio seems simply a 
reversal of the plots by which Benedick and Beatrice 
are united. 4 Sir Toby and Sir Andrew themselves 
are of the race of Falstaff and Slender, differing from 
these much as, in any art, idealized figures grow to 
differ from figures which are taken more directly 
from life. The Clown is similarly of the race of 
Touchstone. And so on ; the more one looks for 
familiar things in new guise, the more one finds. 
What conceals them at first is only that Twelfth 
Night resembles As You Like It in being full of a 
romantic sentiment peculiarly its own, with a less 
palpable but still sufficient undercurrent of delicate 
melancholy. Throughout, too, the infusion of this 
new spirit into these old bodies is made with the 
quiet ease which we have begun to recognize as the 
mark of Shakspere's handiwork. 

Together with As You Like It, then, we may call 
Twelfth Night light, joyous, fantastic, fleeting, — a 
thing to be enjoyed, to be loved, to be dreamed about ; 

1 I. ii. Cf. Comedy of Errors, I. i. 62 seq. 

2 III. iii. 38 seq. ; iv. 388 seq. Cf. Comedy of Errors, IV. i 100 seq. ; 
ii. 29 seq. ; iv. 1 seq. 

3 Seep. 195. 

4 Cf. II. v. with Much Ado About Nothing, II. iii. ; III. i. 



TWELFTH NIGHT 209 

but never, if one would understand, to be taken with 
philosophic seriousness. Plays in purpose, poems in 
fact, these two comedies alike are best appreciated by 
those who find in them only lasting expressions and 
sources of unthinking pleasure. 

While As You Like It, however, differs from Shaks- 
pere's other work by translating into permanent dra- 
matic form a dull novel of a kind not before found 
among the sources of his plays, Twelfth Night, far 
from being essentially different from his former plays, 
is perhaps the most completely characteristic we have 
yet considered. Again and again we have already re- 
marked in Shakspere a trait which will appear through- 
out. For what reason we cannot say — indolence we 
might guess in one mood, prudence in another — he 
was exceptionally economical of invention, except in 
mere language. Scenes, characters, situations, devices 
which had once proved themselves effective he would 
constantly prefer to any bold experiment. This very 
economy of invention, perhaps, contained an element 
of strength ; it left his full energy free for the mas- 
terly phrasing, and the spontaneous creation of char- 
acter, which has made his work lasting. Strong or 
weak, however, the trait is clearly becoming almost 
as characteristic as the constant concreteness of his 
style; and nowhere does it appear more distinctly or 
to more advantage than when we recognize in Twelfth 
Night — with all its perennial delights — a master- 
piece not of invention but of recapitulation. 



210 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 



XV. Shakspere from 1593 to 1600. 

In the year 1600, we may remember, more works of 
Shakspere were published than in any other. This alone 
might have warranted us in considering 1600 as an 
epoch in his career. The fact that by 1600, however, 
all the plays considered in this chapter were probably 
finished gives us a better warrant still ; for clearly we 
have reached a point where we may conveniently pause 
to consider the growth and the change in his work since 
1593. 

To begin with, we may well remind ourselves of at 
least two inevitable uncertainties. Our chronology, 
in the first place, is at best conjectural ; in the second 
place, our texts are almost invariably some years 
later than the dates to which we have assigned them. 
In view of the incessant alteration made in dramatic 
works which hold the stage anywhere, it would be 
folly to assume the complete integrity of any text in 
the whole series of Shakspere's plays. 

The latter consideration, to be sure, need trouble us 
less than at first seems probable. While it must 
surely be of weight in any system of verbal criticism, 
it does not so seriously affect a study concerned 
with broad effects. In considering any of the plays 
before us, however, we must beware of the temptation 
to assume rigidly that it was finished, just as we have 
it, at the time to which we conjecturally assign it. 



SHAKSPERE FROM 1593 TO 1600 211 

All we can fairly assert in most cases is that on the 
whole we believe the work, in conception and in gen- 
eral motive, to belong to the period we name. 

In the matter of actual chronology, we are more un- 
certain still. Except in one or two cases — the most 
definite of which is Henry V. — we are quite unable 
to specify anything like an indubitable date. What is 
more, an indubitable date in itself might be mislead- 
ing. Any single year embraces twelve months ; two 
works properly assigned to it, then, may often be 
nearer to works of contiguous years than to each 
other. All we may fairly assert of our chronology, 
then, is that to a number of critics the order in which 
we have considered the plays discussed in this chap- 
ter has seemed approximately probable: while, with 
more certainty than is usual in our study, we may feel 
sure that, in some order or other, and in a condition 
more or less approaching that in which we possess 
them, all the plays we have as yet considered existed 
by 1600. 

In 1597 there were quartos of Romeo and Juliet, 
Richard II, and Richard III. In 1598, Meres's list 
mentioned the Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Comedy 
of 'Errors, Love 's Labour' 's Lost, the Midsummer NigM' 's 
Dream, the Merchant of Venice, Richard II, Richard 
III, Henry IV., King John, Titus Andronicus, and 
Romeo and Juliet ; in 1598, too, there were quartos of 
Love's Labour's Lost, and the First Part of Henry IV. 
In 1600 came quartos of Titus Andronicus, the Mid- 
summer Night's Dream, the Merchant of Venice, the 



212 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Second Part of Henry IV, Henry V, and Much Ado 
About Nothing ; while As You Like It was entered in 
the Stationers' Register. There can be no reasonable 
doubt that Henry VI. is on the whole earlier than any 
other of the chronicle-histories, nor yet that the Merry 
Wives of Windsor belongs to the period of Henry IV. 
and Henry V. This leaves us in doubt onby concern- 
ing the Taming of the Shrew, which is of little weight 
in our general consideration of Shakspere, and Twelfth 
Night, which was certainly in existence by February, 
1602, and with equal certainty contains little which 
should alter an opinion based on the other plays 
before us. 

Whatever our errors in chronological detail, then, 
our chronology now warrants the conclusions we may 
draw about the comparative traits of Shakspere in 
1593 and in 1600. 

In 1593, we remember, when Marlowe's work was 
finished, Shakspere, though had he accomplished 
nothing great, had displayed three marked charac- 
teristics, — a natural habit of thought, by means of 
which he found words and concepts more nearly iden- 
tical than most men ever find them ; restless versa- 
tility in trying his hand at every kind of contemporary 
writing ; and finally a touch of originality, in enliven- 
ing the characters of romantic comedy by the results 
of every-day observation. 1 At the age of twenty-nine, 
after six years of professional life, this seemed the sum 
of his accomplishment. 

1 See pp. 65, 100-102. 



SHAKSPERE FROM 1593 TO 1600 213 

During the seven years which followed, the years 
which brought him from twenty-nine to thirty -six, and 
in the last of which he had been professionally at work 
for thirteen years, all these traits persisted and de- 
veloped. While, in view of the intense craving for 
verbal novelty which remained so marked a trait of 
his public, it would be unsafe to assert that he was 
steadily changing his habit of thought from a con- 
sideration of mere phrases to one of the concepts for 
which in his mind the most trivial phrase would nor- 
mally stand, it is certain that his style, always preg- 
nant, kept growing more so ; and that by 1600 he 
was perhaps more perfectly master of concept and 
word alike than the growing intensity of his later 
thought allowed him to remain. As for his versatil- 
ity, we need only remember that when this period 
began tragedy remained in the condition of Titus An- 
dronicus, comedy at best in that of the Two Gentle- 
men of Verona, chronicle-history in that of Henry VI. ; 
and that by 1000 he had surely produced, to go no 
further, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Notldny, 
and Henry IV. As for his observation of life, the first 
clear trace of which we found in the Two Gentlemen of 
Verona, it was the necessary foundation of his char- 
acteristic creative imagination, which revealed itself 
perhaps most plainly in the development from Old- 
castle of Fal staff. 

This power of creating character — of making his 
personages not only theatrically effective, but so hu- 
man that posterity has discussed them as gravely 



214 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

as if they had actually lived — is the most marked 
trait which appeared in Shakspere during the seven 
years we are now considering'. In 1593 not one of 
the great Shaksperean characters is known to have 
existed ; by 1600 he had surely created Romeo, and 
Juliet, and Mercutio, and Richard III., and Shy- 
lock, and Portia, and Falstaff, and Hotspur, and 
Prince Hal, and Benedick, and Beatrice, and Dog- 
berry, and Rosalind, and Jaques, and Touchstone — 
one might go on for a page or two. A normal result, 
perhaps, of the traits which he had earlier shown, this 
creative power had now declared itself with a vigor 
which makes the result of his work, even had he never 
done more, sufficient to place him at the head of 
imaginative English Literature. 

^ • A little scrutiny, however, shows that, in spite of 
its scope and achievement, this power worked and de- 
veloped very normally. Off-hand one is disposed to 
think of Shakspere as at any moment able, if he 
chose, to do anything. Unless our chronology be 
utterly wrong, however, it proves pretty clearly that 
when he was busy with one kind of writing he was 
by no means in condition to do equally well with 
another. Compare the Midsummer NigMs Dream 
with Richard III., for example ; Borneo and Juliet 
with Richard II. ; the Merchant of Venice with King 
John ; Henry IV. with the Taming of the Shrew and 
the Merry Wives of Windsor ; Much Ado About Nothing 
with Henry V Roughly speaking, we may assume 
each of these groups to be contemporary. Pretty 



SHAKSPERE FROM L593 TO L600 215 

clearly, for all his power, Shakspere was human 
enough to slight one thing when he was giving his 
best energies to something else. Along with the old 
versatility of effort, then, we find a new trait, or per- 
haps rather a new development, which we may call 
versatility of concentration. 

Besides all this, we must emphasize the trait by 
which, in the beginning of this chapter, we justified 
the separation of the plays here discussed from those 
discussed before. 1 Throughout these later plays, some- 
times pervading them, sometimes apparent rather in 
detail, we are constantly aware of the impulse which 
we called artistic. In distinction from the Shakspere 
of the old experimental work, the Shakspere who made 
the plays iioav before us must have been so constantly, 
spontaneously, profoundly aware of how what he was 
dealing with made him feel that he would instinctively 
try to express his feeling by every possible means. 
In the 3IiJ.sum>ner Night's Dream, where we consid- 
ered this trait most carefully, it appeared at once first 
and perhaps most purely. Ever since it has appeared 
again and again, in constantly varying form. 

At the risk of tedious repetition, it is prudent to 
warn whoever has not carefully watched the work of 
artists that no valid conclusion concerning their actual 
lives and characters can be drawn from even their 
most sincere artistic achievements. Without other 
evidence than is as yet before us, we cannot assert 
that Shakspere thought, or believed, or cared for this 

1 See p. 103. 



216 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

ideal or that ; nor yet that to have known in imagina- 
tion what he has expressed he must personally have 
experienced certain circumstances, good or evil. We 
can assert, however, that he could hardly have ex- 
pressed these things without at least three qualifica- 
tions : first, a sympathetic understanding of such 
great historic movement as is finally phrased in 
Henri/ IV. and Henry V. ; secondly, a sympathetic 
sharing of such romantic feeling as underlies both the 
single tragedy of this period and all the comedies ; 
and thirdly, a sympathetic understanding of how a 
charming, idealized woman can fascinate and enchain 
an adoring, romantic lover. All of which, while last- 
ingly true, is not spiritually profound. 

"We come, then, to what we may call his limitations. 
In the first place, the only play of this period which 
involves any profound sense of the evils lurking in 
human life and human nature, is Much Ado About 
Nothing, where the undercurrent of irony tends 
slightly toward deeper things. In the second place, 
as we saw most concretely in Twelfth Night, Shakspere 
throughout this period, though a skilful stage-play- 
wright and easily master of his technical art, was very 
chary of invention. His mastery is shown not only 
by his mere verbal style, but by constructive skill. 
This we saw in Borneo and Juliet ; and, better still, in 
the Midsummer Night's Dream, and the Merchant of 
Venice, and As You Like It, where he subtly adapted 
the conventional old Induction, as it appears in the 
Taming of the Shrew, to the form in which, as part of 



SHAKSPERE FROM 1593 TO 1600 217 

the main action, it removes incredible incidents to 
plausible distance. His economy, or poverty, of in- 
vention, on the other hand, shows itself in his inces- 
sant repetition of whatever device — of character, of 
incident, of situation — had once proved theatrically 
effective. 

In the presence of such work as we have been con- 
sidering, however, one has small patience with talk 
of limitations. One's impulse is rather to question 
whether in seven years any merely human being could 
possibly have contributed to a stage and a nation 
which up to that moment had had little permanent 
literature at all, so wonderful a body of permanent 
literature as is actually before us. To correct this 
impression, — to see Shakspere's work in its true re- 
lation to its time, — we must glance hastily at the 
other productions x of these seven years. 

In 1594 were published, together with Lucrece, the 
first works of Chapman, Hooker, and Southwell, 
Daniel's Rosamund, Drayton's Idea's Mirror, and 
plays by Greene, Lodge, Marlowe, Nash, and Feele. 
Hooker's work was the most lasting — the first four 
books of his Ecclesiastical Polity. In 1595 came 
Daniel's Civil Wars, Sidney's Apology for Poetry, and 
the Colin Clout, the Astrophel, the Amoretti, and the 
Epitlialamium of Spenser. In 1596 came Davies's 
Orchestra, Ralegh's Discovery of Guiana, and the last 
three books of the Faerie Queene. In 1597, together 
with the three first quartos of Shakspere's plays, came 

1 Rylaud: Chronological Outlines, etc. 



218 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

the first ten of Bacon's Essays, another book of Hook- 
er's Ecclesiastical Polity, and the first published works 
of Dekker and of Middleton. In 1598, together with 
two new quartos of Shakspere, came the first instal- 
ment of Chapman's Homer, Drayton's Heroical Epis- 
tles, Marlowe and Chapman's Hero and Leander, and 
the first published work of Thomas Heywood. In 
1599, the year when Spenser died, came Davies's Nosce 
Teipsum, and among other plays Jonson's Every Man 
out of his Humour. In 1600, together with six new 
quartos of Shakspere, came Dekker's Fortunatus and 
Shoemaker's Holiday, Fairfax's Tasso, the last volume 
of Hakluyt's Voyages, and Jonson's Cynthia's Revels. 

This list, a mere hasty culling from Ryland's book, 
is enough for our purposes. Without pretending to 
be exact or exhaustive, it shows clearly two facts : at 
the time when Shakspere was making the plays con- 
sidered in this chapter, the intellectual life about him 
was active to a degree unprecedented in English Litera- 
ture ; and the works contributed to English Literature 
during this period differed from what had come be- 
fore almost as distinctly as this second group of 
Shakspere's plays differs from the first. What came 
before was archaic ; at least by comparison, what comes 
now seems modern. 

A glance at the mere names of the playwrights will 
confirm this impression. In Mr. Fleay's Chronicle 
History of the London Stage, he gives in one chapter 
a list of the authors who wrote between 1586 and 1593, 1 

1 Pages 89-91. 



SHAKSPERE FROM 1593 TO 1600 219 

and in the next a list of those who wrote between 
1594 and 1603. 1 Shakspere's name appears in both 
lists, hi the first his fellow-playwrights are Peele, 
Marlowe, Greene, Lodge, Kyd, Nash, and Lyly ; in the 
second they are Jonson, Dekker, Chapman, Marston, 
Middleton, and Key wood. The only name besides 
Shakspere's which the lists contain in common is that 
of Lyly, an old play of whose was revived after 1597 
by the Chapel children of Blackfriars. 

These facts are enough. Great as Shakspere's de- 
velopment was during these seven years, it was only 
a part of the contemporary development which finally 
modernized both English Literature and the English 
stage. As was the case with his versatile, experi- 
mental beginning, what he accomplished was less 
extraordinary than it would have been during almost 
any other equal period of English history. We can 
hardly wonder that at a moment of such supreme 
general vigor and activity, he was not remarked as 
supreme. 

For, after all, if one ask how his work and his 
achievement so far must have presented itself to his 
own mind, there is no more plausible answer than 
this : With all his old command of mere language, and 
with consummate command of theatrical technique, he 
had been possessed by an amazing power of creative 
imagination, and by sustained though variable artistic 
impulse. To these facts the permanence of his achieve- 
ment during this period is due. In the course of time, 

1 Pages 154-156. 



220 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

this permanence has obscured the equally true facts 
that when his energy was concentrated anywhere it 
weakened somewhere else, and that, in spite of his 
great power of creating characters and phrases, he was 
weaker than many of his contemporaries in such in- 
genious, fresh invention of stage situations as always 
commands contemporary applause. At the same time, 
too, he had never used his mastered powers for the 
serious expression of a profound or solemn purpose. 
His temper, so far as we may judge it from the work 
we have considered, was romantic, buoyant, wholesome. 
To himself, if we had no other evidence, we might 
guess that he seemed a vigorous, successful playwright, 
who accomplished tolerable results in spite of obvious 
limitations and infirmities which he did not allow to 
bother him. Before completing our notion of him 



VIII 

SHAKSPERE'S SONNETS 

[In 1598, Meres, praising Shakspere, mentioned " hissugred Sonnets 
among his private friends." In the Passionate Pilgrim, ascribed to 
Shakspere though probably in large part spurious, and published in 
1599, appeared Sonnets 138 and 144, — 

"When my love swears that she is made of truth," etc., 
and 

" Two loves I have of comfort and despair," etc. 

On May 20th, 1609, "a Booke calles Shakespeares sonnettes" 
was entered in the Stationers' Register. In 1609, " Shake-Speares 
Sonnets. Never before Imprinted " were published, substantially as we 
have them. The book was dedicated by Thomas Thorpe, the pub- 
lisher, " To the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets, Mr. W. H." 
What the term " begetter" means, and who " Mr. W. H." was, have 
never been quite settled. 

Concerning the dates of the sonnets we can assert only that some 
of them were probably in existence before 1598, that two of the second 
series were certainly in existence, substantially as we have them, 
in 1599, and that all were finished by 1609. In what order they were 
actually written we have no means of determining. For our purposes, 
however, we are justified in assuming that, as a whole, the sonnets in- 
clude work probably done before Henry IV., and also work done dur- 
ing the period covered by the next chapter.] 

During the last century or so, a considerable litera- 
ture of comment and interpretation 1 has gathered 
about the Sonnets. Some of this is instructive, some 

1 Conveniently summarized by Tyler: Shakespeare's Sonnets; Lon- 
don, 1890, pp. 145-149. 



222 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

suggestive ; much is ingeniously absurd. In general, 
however, all this criticism alike deals chiefly with the 
question of whether the Sonnets are authentic state- 
ments of autobiographic fact, or literary exercises, or 
perhaps rather allegorical fantasies. A similar un- 
answerable question exists concerning the first great 
series of Elizabethan sonnets, — Sidney's AstropJiel 
and Stella. About the two other best-known series, 
there is less doubt : Spenser's Amoretti are almost 
certainly authentic addresses to the lady who became 
his wife ; while Drayton's sonnets to Idea are prob- 
ably mere rhetorical exercises. 

If to these names we add that of Daniel, who wrote 
somewhat analogous verses to one Delia, we have 
completed the list of familiar series of Elizabethan 
sonnets, as distinguished from stray, independent 
ones. The names of Sidney, Spenser, Drayton, and 
Daniel, with whom we here group Shakspere, in- 
stantly define one fact about the Sonnets which marks 
them apart from most of Shakspere's work. Sidney 
and Spenser never wrote for the actual stage ; and, 
though Drayton seems to have collaborated in a num- 
ber of plays, and Daniel to have written one or two, 
both Drayton and Daniel are generally remembered 
not as dramatists but as poets, the body of whose 
purely literary work remains considerable. In other 
words, we group Shakspere now with the masters not 
of popular, but of polite literature. The Sonnets, like 
almost all the extant work of these other poets, were 
addressed not to the general taste of their time, but to 



SHAKSPERE'S SOXXETS 223 

the most sensitively critical. Whatever else, they are 
painstaking, conscientious works of art. 

Throughout them, too, appears a mood perhaps most 
fully expressed in Sonnet 81 : — 

" Or I shall live your epitaph to make, 

Or you survive when I in earth am rotten; 

From hence your memory death cannot take, 

Although in me each part will be forgotten. 

Your name from hence immortal life shall have, 

Though I, once gone, to all the world must die: 

The earth can yield me but a common grave, 

When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie. 

Your monument shall be my gentle verse, 

Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read, 

And tongues to be your being shall rehearse, 

When all the breathers of this world are dead ; 
You still shall live — such virtue hath my pen — 
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men." 

The •writer of these sonnets, in short, avows his belief 
that they shall be lasting literature. Not an infallible 
sign of serious artistic purpose, this is at least a fre- 
quent. It appears in Spenser's Amoretti, and in many 
passages of Chapman and of Ben Jonson, like that 
superb boast about poetry in the Poetaster : — 

" She can so mould Rome and her monuments 
Within the liquid marble of her lines, 
That they shall live, fresh and miraculous, 
Even in the midst of innovating dust." 

In small men pathetically comic, such confidence 
becomes in great men nobly admirable. Of Shaks- 
pere's Sonnets, then, we may fairly assert that they 



224 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

must have seemed to the writer more important and 
valuable than his plays. 

Such being the case, whoever attempts to define an 
impression of Shakspere's individuality must take 
special interest in these most conscientiously artistic of 
his works. If one could make sure of what they mean, 
one might confidently feel intimate knowledge of their 
author. Such confidence, though, has betrayed too 
many honest critics into absurdity, to prove, nowadays, 
however tempting, a serious danger. The only im- 
pregnable answer to the question of what the Sonnets 
signify is the one lately made by some German writer : 
" Ignoramus, ignorabimus" (" We do not know, and 
we never shall"). 

Keeping carefully in mind, however, the necessary 
uncertainty of any conclusion, we may fairly incline to 
one or another of the unproved, unprovable conjectures 
as to what the Sonnets actually mean. The conjecture 
of Mr. Thomas Tyler, while by no means impregnable, 
seems perhaps the most plausible. 1 In brief, he be- 
lieves that the first series of the Sonnets — from 1 to 
126 — were addressed to William Herbert, Earl of 
Pembroke, a very fascinating and somewhat erratic 
young nobleman, whose age fits the known dates ; and 
that the second series — from 127 to 152 — were ad- 
dressed to a certain Mrs. Mary Fitton, at one time a 



1 T. Tyler: Shakespeare's Sonnets: London; David Nutt: 1890. 
Mr. Fleay puts no faith in this Tyler story ; and sets forth many reasons 
for believing the Sonnets to have been addressed to Southampton ; 
Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama : 208-232. 



SHAKSPERE'S SOXXETS 225 

maid of honor to Queen Elizabeth, and demonstra- 
bly a person of considerable fascination and of loose 
morals. Shakspere, it is assumed, became her lover ; 
and Pembroke, by whom she certainly had a child, 
is assumed to have taken her from him. The improb- 
ability that a woman of her rank should have had to 
do with theatrical people is met by the fact that in 
1600 Will Kempe, the clown of Shakspere's company, 
dedicated a book to this very lady. The probability 
that Mrs. Fitton was the woman in question was curi- 
ously strengthened by the fact, discovered after Tyler's 
work was written, that a colored effigy on her family 
monument shows her to have been of very dark com- 
plexion. And so on. The tale is plausible ; after all, 
however, it is only a tissue of past gossip and modern 
conjecture. The most one can say of it is this : The 
first series of Sonnets expresses a noble fascination ; 
the second, a base one, of which the baseness grows 
with contemplation. The former is certainly in har- 
mony with what is known of Pembroke, the latter 
with what is known of Mary Fitton. Had Shakspere 
actually undergone such an experience of folly and 
shame as Tyler conjectures, these poems would fitly 
express it. 

Off-hand, of course, one would declare the very 
frankness of self-revelation thus suggested to be in- 
credible. Sensitiveness, one would say, is essentially 
reticent ; and whoever wrote the Somiets proved there- 
by the possession of rare sensitiveness. A little con- 
sideration, however, proves this objection mistaken. 

15 



226 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

To go no further, Alfred de Musset was sensitive, and 
George Sand, and Tennyson, and Mrs. Browning ; yet 
almost in our own time all four have poured forth 
their souls on paper with almost Byronic profusion. 
Not long since, an admiring reader of Mrs. Browning 
expressed, together with his admiration, deep satis- 
faction that he never knew her. Had he known her, 
he said, he could not have borne the thought that she 
had taken the whole world into a confidence which she 
could hardly have spoken to her nearest and dearest. 
All of which meant that, despite his appreciation, the 
reader was not at heart an artist, while Mrs. Brown- 
ing was. So, very surely, was Shakspere. 

Even if the Sonnets be self-revealing, however, their 
self-revelation takes a very deliberate shape. Nothing 
could be much further from a spontaneous outburst 
than these Shaksperean stanzas, whose form is among 
the most highly studied in our literature. During 
the Elizabethan period there were at least three well- 
defined varieties of sonnet : the legitimate Italian, or 
Petrarchan, generally imitated by Wyatt, Surrey, and 
Sidney ; the Spenserian, in which the system of rhymes 
resembled that of the Faerie Queene ; and that now 
before us, whose most familiar example is in the work 
of Shakspere. If not so intricately melodious as the 
Spenserian sonnet, nor yet so sonorously sustained 
as the Petrarchan, this Shaksperean sonnet is con- 
stantly fresh, varied, dignified, and above all idio- 
matic. Why certain metrical forms seem specially at 
home in certain languages, it is hard to say ; but as 



SHAKSPERE'S SONNETS 227 

surely as the hexameter is idiomatically classic, or the 
terza rima Italian, or the Alexandrine French, so the 
blank verse line of Elizabethan tragedy and the melo- 
diously fluent quatrains of the Shaksperean sonnet are 
idiomatically English. If one would appreciate at once 
their idiomatic quality and the exquisite skill of their 
phrasing, one cannot do better than try to alter a 
word or a syllable anywhere. In one place Mr. Tyler 
has tried. The second line of the 146th sonnet is 
corrupt, reading thus : — 

" Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, 
My sinful earth these rebel powers that thee array." 

Clearly my sinful earth in the second line is a printer's 
error. Trying to correct it, Mr. Tyler has suggested 
two words which apparently fit the meaning, and has 
made the line read 

" [Why feed'st] these rebel powers that thee arra} r ? " 

Though one cannot suggest an improvement on this 
emendation, one cannot resist a conviction that the 
man who wrote the rest of the sonnet could never 
have written these two syllables. The example, if 
extreme, is typical of the style throughout. No- 
where is Shakspere's art more constantly and elabo- 
rately fine. 

Whatever else the Sonnets reveal, then, they surely 
reveal the temperament of an artist, — a temperament, 
as we have seen, which is not only exquisitely sensi- 
tive to emotional impressions, but is bound to find 
the best relief from the suffering of such sensitive- 



228 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

ness in deliberate, studied expression of it. Who- 
ever, at moments of intense feeling, has felt compelled 
to scribble doggerel, and consequently — however piti- 
ful his verse — has felt better, must have at least an 
inkling of what such a temperament is. 

Not the least peculiar trait of it is one which, though 
not generally appreciated, goes far to explain the great 
emotional relief afforded by even comically inadequate 
expression. To phrase an emotional mood an artist 
must, as it were, cut his nature in two. With part of 
himself he must cling to the mood in question, or at 
least revive it at will. With another part of himself he 
must deliberately withdraw from the mood, observe it, 
criticise it, and carefully seek the vehicle of expression 
which shall best serve to convey it to other minds 
than his own. The self who speaks, in short, is not 
quite the self whom he would discuss. To put the 
matter otherwise, an artist must sometimes be almost 
conscious of what modern psychologists would call 
double personality. To put it differently still, every 
art of expression involves a fundamental use of the 
art which is in least repute, — the histrionic. The 
lyric poet must first experience his emotion, must then 
abstract himself from it, — thereby relieving himself 
considerably, — and finally must imaginatively and 
critically revive it at will. Undoubtedly this process 
is not always conscious. Beyond question, remark- 
able artistic effects are sometimes produced by methods 
which seem to the artist spontaneous. Such effects, 
however, wonderful though they be, are in a sense 



SHAKSPERE'S SONNETS 229 

rather accidental than masterly ; and whatever else 
the art of Shakspere's Sonnets may be called, it is 
beyond doubt masterly, not accidental. 

Granting all this, however, we may still be sure that 
even deliberate, conscious, fundamentally histrionic art 
can express nothing beyond what the artist has known. 
His knowledge may come from his own experience ; or 
from the experience of others whom he has watched ; 
or from experiences recorded in history or in litera- 
ture ; or even from the vividly imagined experiences 
of creatures whom he himself has invented. Actually 
or sympathetically, however, he must somehow have 
known the moods which he expresses. In the sense, 
then, that what any artist expresses must somehow 
have formed a part of his mental life, all art may be 
called self-revealing, autobiographic. 

Shakspere's Sonnets, then, may teach us truth 
about Shakspere ; for what they express, in terms of 
emotional moods, cannot be much questioned. The 
real doubt, after all, concerns only what caused these 
moods ; and that is a question rather of gossip and of 
scandal, of impertinent curiosity, than of criticism. 
What the Sonnets surely express — what no criticism 
can take from us — is the eagerness, the restlessness, 
the eternally sweet suffering of a lover whose love is 
of this world. Love, sacred or profane, idealizes its 
object. If this object be earthly or human, experience 
must finally shatter the ideal. Religion is a certainty 
only because the object of its love is a pure ideal, 
which nothing but change of faith can alter. So long 



230 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

as any human being cares passionately for anything 
not purely ideal, so long will he surely find life tragic. 

The lasting tragedy of earthly love, then, is what 
the Sonnets phrase ; and this they phrase in no imper- 
sonal terms, but rather in the language of one whose 
temperament, as you grow year by year to know it 
better, stands out as individual as any in literature. 
To define a temperament thus known, however, is no 
easy matter. At best one may hope, by specifying a 
few typical phases and expressions of it, to suggest 
some inkling of the lasting, strengthening impression 
of Shakspere's individuality which grows on whoever 
knows the Sonnets well. 

Recall, if you will, the 111th Sonnet, 1 

" O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide," 
and compare with it the 29th and the 30th : — 



" When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, 
I all alone beweep my outcast state 
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries 
And look upon myself and curse my fate, 
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, 
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, 
With what I most enjoy contented least; 
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, 
Haply I think on thee, and then my state, 
Like to the lark at break of day arising 
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; 
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings 
That then I scorn to change my state with kings. 

1 See p. 46. 



SHAKSPERE'S SOXXETS 231 



" When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 
I summon up remembrance of things past, 
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, 
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste: 
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, 
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, 
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, 
And moan the expense of many a vanish 'd sight: 
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, 
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er 
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, 
"Which I new pay as if not paid before. 

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, 

All losses are restored and sorrows end." 

These are more than enough to express a nature of 
great natural delicacy, passionately sensitive at once 
to the charm of a personal fascination, and to the 
inexhaustible pain which must come from surround- 
ings essentially base. 1 

Other sonnets show a temperament equally sensitive 
to the spiritual miseries which chasten a passionate 
animal nature : — 



' The expense of spirit in a waste of shame 
Is lust in action; and till action, lust 
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, 
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, 
Enjoy'd no sooner, but despised straight, 
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had 
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait 
On purpose laid to make the taker mad ; 

1 Sec pp. 40-44. 



232 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Mad in pursuit and in possession so ; 

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme ; 

A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe ; 

Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. 
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well 
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. 



" My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun ; 
Coral is far more red than her lips' red ; 
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; 
If hair be wires, black wires grow on her head. 
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, 
But no such roses see I in her cheeks ; 
And in some perfumes is there more delight 
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. 
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know 
That music hath a far more pleasing sound; 
I grant I never saw a goddess go; 
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground : 

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare 

As any she belied with false compare." 

The bitter irony of that sonnet is not, 
always appreciated. 

With all this sensitiveness to actual fact, the man 
remained profoundly metaphysical. At least he was 
constantly and instinctively, if not quite consciously, 
aware of the evanescence of all earthly phenomena, 
and of the real certainty of analytic idealism. For a 
plain expression of the first of these traits, the follow- 
ing sonnets will serve : — 



SHAKSPERE'S SONNETS 233 



When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced 
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age ; 
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed 
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage ; 
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain 
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, 
And the firm soil win of the watery main, 
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store; 
When I have seen such interchange of state, 
Or state itself confounded to decay ; 
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, 
That Time will come and take my love away. 
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose 
But weep to have that which it fears to lose. 



LXV. 

" Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, 
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power, 
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, 
Whose action is no stronger than a flower ] 
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out 
Against the wreckful siege of battering days, 
When rocks impregnable are not so stout, 
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays 1 
O, fearful meditation ! where, alack, 
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid ? 
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back ? 
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid 1 
O, none, unless this miracle have might, 
That in black ink my love may still shine bright," l 

1 Cf. Sonnet 81 p. 223. 



234 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

That all the while he knew the consolations of 
analytic idealism we may be sure from such sonnets 
as these : — 



; That time of year thou mayst in me behold 
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day, 
As after sunset fadeth in the west, 
Which by and by black night doth take away, 
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. 
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire 
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, 
As the death- bed whereon it must expire 
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by. 

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, 
To love that well which thou must leave ere long. 



But be contented : when that fell arrest 
Without all bail shall carry me away, 
My life hath in this line some interest,. 
Which for memorial still with thee shall stay. 
When thou reviewest this, thou dost review 
The very part was consecrate to thee : 
The earth can have but earth, which is his due ; 
My spirit is thine, the better part of me : 
So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life, 
The prey of worms, my body being dead, 
The coward conquest of a wretch's knife, 
Too base of thee to be remembered. 

The worth of that is that which it contains, 
And that is this, and this with thee remains." 



SHAKSPERE'S SOXXETS 235 

All his metaphysics, however, could not make 
actual life momentarily unreal : 



Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, 
As, to behold desert a beggar born, 
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity, 
And purest faith unhappily forsworn, 
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced, 
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, 
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, 
And strength by limping sway disabled, 
And art made tongue-tied by authority, 
And folly doctor-like controlling skill, 
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity, 
And captive good attending captain ill : 

Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, 
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone." 



; Then hate me when thou wilt ; if ever, now ; 
Xow, while the world is bent my deeds to cross, 
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow, 
And do not drop in for an after-loss : 
Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow, 
Come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe ; 
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, 
To linger out a purposed overthrow. 
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last, 
When other petty griefs have done their spite, 
But in the onset come ; so shall I taste 
At first the very worst of fortune's might, 

And other strains of woe, which now seem woe, 
Compared with loss of thee will not seem so." 



236 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

With less direct quotation it would hardly have 
been possible to define the generalities which attempted 
to name some of the leading personal traits of Shaks- 
pere, as they appear in the Sonnets. Nor without 
much quotation could another of his characteristic 
traits have been made clear. The deep depression, the 
acute suffering, the fierce passion which should nor- 
mally result from what we have seen, Shakspere seems 
fully to have known. Instead of expressing it, how- 
ever, in such wild outbursts as one might naturally 
expect, he displays throughout a power of self-mas- 
tery, which gives his every utterance, no matter how 
passionate, the beauty of restrained and mastered 
artistic form. A form not in itself beautiful, one 
grows to feel, must, for its very want of beauty, have 
been inadequate to phrase the full emotion which such 
a nature felt. 

The Sonnets, then, alter any conception of Shaks- 
pere's individuality which might spring from the plays 
we have read. Even though they tell nothing of the 
facts of his life, the Sonnets imply very much concern- 
ing the inner truth of it. No one, surely, could have 
written these poems without a temperament in every 
sense artistic, and a consciously mastered art. Nor 
could any one have expressed such emotion and such 
passion as underlie the Sonnets without a knowledge 
of suffering which no sane poise could lighten, like 
that of the chronicle-histories ; nor any such cheerful 
sanity, or such robust irony as the comedies express ; 
nor any such sentimental sense of tragedy as makes 



SHAKSPERE'S SONNETS 237 

Romeo and Juliet perennially lovely. Whoever wrote 
the Sonnets must have known the depths of spiritual 
suffering ; nor yet have known how to emerge from 
them. Such a Shakspere, unlike what we have known 
hitherto, is not unlike the Shakspere who will reveal 
himself in the plays to come. 



IX 



THE PLAYS OF SHAKSPERE, FROM JULIUS CiESAR 
TO CORIOLANUS 

I. 

The plays to be discussed in this chapter differ from 
what have preceded somewhat as the plays from the 
Midsummer Night's Dream to Twelfth Night differed 
from the plays discussed before them. This first 
group, — from Titus Andronicus to the Two Gentle- 
men of Verona, — which probably occupied the first 
six years of Shakspere's professional life, were chiefly 
experimental. The second group, which probably oc- 
cupied the next seven years of his professional life, 
were all more or less alive with the surging forces of 
artistic impulse and creative imagination; none of 
them, however, necessarily implied profound spiritual 
experience. The group to which we now come, which 
probably occupied the years between 1600 and 1608, 
mark a distinct development in Shakspere's artistic 
character, 

That the development which we are trying to follow 
is rather artistic than personal, however, we cannot too 
strenuously keep in mind. The details of Shakspere's 
private life, quite undiscoverable nowadays, are, after 



JULIUS CESAR 239 

all, no one's business. For the rest, nobody familiar 
with the literature and the stage of his time can very 
seriously believe that in writing his plays he generally 
meant to be philosophic, ethical, didactic. Like any 
other playwright, he made plays for audiences. He 
differed from other playwrights chiefly in the fervid 
depth of his artistic nature. The circumstances of his 
life, meanwhile, made the stage his normal vehicle of 
artistic expression,— the vent for such emotional dis- 
turbance as unexpressed would have become intoler- 
able. The subjects which he chose, or which were 
given him, in short, connecting themselves with the 
fruit of his actual experience, were bound to throw 
him into specific emotional moods. These moods he 
was forced, by the laws of his nature, to infuse into 
the plays which he was writing, just as Marlowe had 
more simply and more instantly infused imaginative 
feeling into his tragedies ten years before. What 
marks the personal development of Shakspere as an 
artist, then, is that his emotional motives suggest a 
deepening knowledge of life. A writer who had never 
dreamed of such sentiments as underlie the Sonnets, 
might conceivably have written all the plays we have 
considered hitherto ; he could not have written the 
plays which are to come. 

A study of Julius Qozsar will serve to define these 
generalizations. 



240 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 



II. Julius C^sar. 

[Julius Caesar was neither entered in the Stationers' 
published until the folio of 1623. 

Its source is certainly North's Plutarch, which was published in 
1579; the general substance of the speech of Antony over Caesar's 
body may have been suggested by a translation of Appian's Chronicle 
of the Roman Wars, published in 1578. 

Not mentioned by Meres in 1598, Julius Cmsar is distinctly alluded 
to in the following stanza from Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, published 
in 1601s — 

" The many-headed multitude were drawne 
By Brutus speech, that Ccesar was ambitious, 
When eloquent Mark Antonie had showne 
His vertues, who but Brutus then was vicious 1 
Man's memorie, with new, forgets the old, 
One tale is good, untill another's told." 

As Mr. Fleay suggests, 1 thereby as usual throwing light on the essen- 
tially theatrical nature of even Shakspere's most masterly work, the 
speech of Polonius, 2 : — 

" I did enact Julius Caesar : I was killed i' the Capitol ; Brutus killed me," 
probably indicates that Julius Ccesar had been acted shortly before 
Hamlet, and that the audience would recognize in Polonius the actor 
who had played Caesar. 

The conjectural date generally assigned to Julius Ccesar is from 
1600 to 1601.] 

At first sight Julius Ccesar impresses you as a 
chronicle-history, differing from what have preceded 
chiefly in the fact that its subject is not English, but 
Roman. Even though when the conspirators appear, 3 

" Their hats are pluck'd about their ears, 
And half their faces buried in their cloaks," 

1 Life, p. 214. 

2 Hamlet, III. ii. 108-9. 
8 II. i. 73. 



JULIUS CESAR 241 

and though in the midst of the ensuing scene the 
clock strike three, 1 one never thinks of anything in this 
play as modern. With complete disregard of archaeo- 
logical detail, Shakspere conceived his characters 
throughout in a manner so true to the spirit of 
Plutarch that one might almost select Julius Coesar 
as a model exposition of the temper which tradition 
assigns to Roman antiquity. 

Almost immediately, however, any one familiar with 
the Elizabethan stage finds in Julius Coesar a marked 
likeness to another kind of play than chronicle-history. 
As Mr. Fleay points out, 2 many of the tragedies of 
blood were in two parts: Marston's Antonio arid Mel- 
lida, Chapman's Bussy d'Ambois, Kyd's Jeronymo, are 
familiar examples. In the first part, the hero meets 
his fate ; in the second, he is revenged, with the approv- 
ing consent of his visible ghost. 3 This is just what 
happens in Julius Cwsar. The first three acts consti- 
tute Ccesar^s Tragedy, the last two, Cossa^s Revenge. 
So marked is this that Mr. Fleay finds reason to believe 
the play as we have it to be a condensed version of 
what were originally two. 

Without accepting this opinion, we may at least de- 
clare it plausible; for surely the effect of Julius Coesar 
is radically unlike anything else we have met. An 
interesting view of it is stated in a note by Mr. 
Young : 4 — 

1 Ibid. 192. 2 Life, p. 215. 8 See p. 252. 

4 Whose kindness is acknowledged in the introductory Note to this 
book. 

16 



242 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

" It is a piece of transitional art, a hybrid between the 
chronicle-histories and the great tragedies. It has neither 
the lack of artistic or ethical significance characteristic of 
the former, nor is it, like the latter, dominated by a single 
great character only. While it has all the unity of interest 
distinguishing the tragedies, it gets it, not by means of a 
single informing idea of artistic or ethical significance, but 
by employing a masterly technique in the service of a 
chronicle-history motive, to tell just what had happened." 

Suggestive as this opinion must be, it does not quite 
emphasize the full divergence of Julius Coesar from 
the English chronicle-histories. These are generally 
obvious dramatic versions of the narratives which they 
represent. Even though all the substance of Julius 
Ccesar, however, and all its essential unity be trace- 
able to Plutarch, no treatment of Plutarch's material 
could be much less obvious than Shakspere's. From 
Plutarch, to be sure, he selects his incidents with the 
skill in choice of what is dramatically effective, which 
he has learned by thirteen years of writing for the 
stage. This is not all, though ; he selects not incidents 
which should tell the recorded story of Cassar, but inci- 
dents which give that story a new and very significant 
character. To understand Julius Ccesar, in short, we 
must appreciate that when Shakspere read Plutarch, 
the narrative awakened in him a definite state of feel- 
ing ; this state of feeling, as well as the facts which 
awakened it, he was bound as an artist to express. 

Easy to appreciate, this feeling is not easy to define. 
One can point out the technical devices, or situations, 



JULIUS CESAR 243 

or motives which help to compose or to express it. One 
can show how the motive of self-deception, already so 
effectively used in comedy, really underlies the con- 
ception of Ciesar and of Brutus alike. One can show 
How the mob, far more seriously treated than the mob 
in Henry VI.} develops and emphasizes the distrust 
of the rampant, headless, brainless populace to which, 
at least as an artist, Shakspere was surely sensitive. 
One can compare the ghost of Cassar with the bogies 
of Richard III., 2 and show how these are little better 
than nursery goblins, while the spirit of Caesar has 
a touch of such actuality as in one mood makes one 
remember the tales of Nemesis, and in another recalls 
the proceedings of the Society for Psychic Research. 
Yet all this does not help us far. Unsatisfactory 
though the phrase be, there is perhaps no more exact 
term for the underlying mood of Julius Ccesar than 
unpassionately ironical. 

In Julius Ccesar human affairs have broken loose 
from human control. Caesar himself, though to his 
own mind almost divinely supreme, is only a passing 
incarnation of the political force everywhere surely, 
miserably inherent in the folly-stricken populace. 
The extinction of his person does not so much as 
trouble this force. Other Cassars shall come, and 
others still ; all, like the great Caesar, to be the sport 
of fate. Yet those who wish for better things and 
nobler are just as powerless. Brutus, let him think 

i Compare III. ii. with 2 Henri/ VI., IV. ii.-viii. 
2 IV. iii. 275 seq. ; cf. Rich. III. V. iii. 118 seq. 



244 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

as lie will that he acts freely, is rather passively 
swept on to the end which now, as then and ever, 
must await those fervent idealists, born after their 
moment, who passionately love the traditional virtues 
of an olden time. What is best in human nature is 
as powerless as the puppets who deem themselves 
potent, except, perhaps, that it redeems and ennobles 
character. Men may still be great; but great or 
small, they can actually do nothing. Nowhere is the 
world-old cry of the stricken idealist against the un- 
conquerable progress of vile, overwhelming fact more 
despairingly uttered than by Brutus: 1 

" 0, Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet ! 
Thy spirit walks ahroad, and turns our swords 
In our own proper entrails." 

Such effort as this to expound an artist's mood must 
always run a double risk of misleading. You may 
seem, on the one hand, to be stating personal con- 
victions, or, on the other, to assert that the artist criti- 
cised was preaching. One cannot repeat too often, 
then, that a critic's chief business is not to air his 
own views, but to define those of the artist he dis- 
cusses ; and that so far as the artist is concerned, he 
need never have abstractly formulated his views at all. 
The artist, indeed, has done his work if he have but 
felt his mood and expressed it. From all the fore- 
going attempt to analyze the mood of Julius Ccesar, 
then, nobody need infer anything more than that 

1 V. iii. 94. 



JULIUS CESAR 245 

Shakspere's subject made him feel in a specific way. 
Such analysis of that feeling as we have attempted 
would probably have been quite foreign to him. For 
all that, such analysis is helpful to those who nowa- 
days would try to share his feeling. 

The mood which underlies Julius Ccesar is analo- 
gous to the lighter but still serious mood which we 
found to underlie Much Ado About Nothing. 1 Deeper 
though the mood of Julius Ccesar be, however, it 
never becomes passionate, overmastering. No trait 
of Julius Ccesar, in short, is more characteristic than 
what, in the broadest sense of the word, may be 
called its style. This is never overburdened with 
such a rush of thought and emotion, such a bewil- 
dering range of perception, as should overwhelm or 
confuse it. Nowhere is Shakspere's power more 
surely poised than here ; nowhere is his touch more 
firm and masterly ; nowhere do vivid incidents, indi- 
vidual characters, marvellously plausible background 
or atmosphere, blend in a verbal style at once stronger 
and more limpid. 

The sense of fate displayed in Julius Ccesar war- 
rants, for want of a better word, the term ironical ; 
the cool mastery of style throughout Avarrants the 
term unpassionate. Unpassionatcly ironical, then, 
we may call the play. As unpassionate, it has much 
in common with the plays which we have read before. 
In none of these, for all their beauty, their energy, 
their power, has there been a surge of thought or feel- 



246 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

ing which has overwhelmed, overburdened the style. 
Rather, Shakspere's style has been constantly freeing 
itself from the excessive ingenuity of the older days ; 
and with all the flexibility which only such ingenuity 
could fully have developed, it has been growing more 
and more nearly identical with the thought it would 
phrase. Here, at last, with full mastery, Shakspere 
uses his superb, unpassionate style to express a mood 
which allies Julius Ccesar to what is coming as surely 
as that style allies it to what is past. For, far beyond 
any other play we have as yet considered, Julius Ccesar 
involves a sense of the lasting irony of history, — an 
understanding of the blind fate which must always 
seem to make men its sport. 



III. All's Well That Ends Well. 

[Like Julius Ccesar, All 's Well That Ends Well was first entered in 
1623, and first published in the folio. 

Its source is clearly the story of Giletta of Narbona in Paynter's 
Palace of Pleasure. 

As to its origin and general date there has been much discussion. 
From the clearly early character of some passages, as well as from the 
general character of the story, many critics have been disposed to think 
this play a comparatively late revision of the Love's Labour's Won 
mentioned by Meres. Mr. Fleay, while admitting the obviously early 
passages to be old, is of opinion that if any play is to be recognized as 
Love's Labour 's Won, it is probably not this one, but rather Much Ado 
About Nothing. 1 The question can never be definitely settled. From 
the general character of the style in the later parts of All 's Well That 
Ends Well, however, critics substantially agree in assigning the play 
in its present form to about 1601.] 

1 Life, pp. 204, 216. 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 247 

A short extract from All's Well That Ends Well 
will illustrate the incongruity of its style. In the 
scene where Helena is presented to the King, the dia- 
logue proceeds as follows : 1 — 

"King. I say Ave must not 

So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope, 
To prostitute our past-cure malady 
To empirics, or to dissever so 
Our great self and our credit, to esteem 
A senseless help when help past sense we deem. 

Hel. My duty then shall pay me for my pains: 
I will no more enforce mine office on you; 
Humbly entreating from your royal thoughts 
A modest one, to bear me back again. 

King. I cannot give thee less, to be call'd grateful; 
Thou thought 'st to help me ; and such thanks I give 
As one near death to those that wish him live : 
But what at full I know, thou know'st no part, 
I knowing all my peril, thou no art. 

Hel. What I can do can do no hurt to try, 
Since you set up your rest 'gainst remedy. 
He that of greatest works is finisher 
Oft does them by the weakest minister,'''' etc. 

The lines italicized in this passage are clearly in a 
manner quite as early as that of Love's Labour's Lost, 
which we assigned to 1589. The other lines are in 
a manner common with Shakspere twelve years later. 
Though the latter predominate in All's Well Tliat 
Ends Well, there is enough of the former to give the 
play unmistakable oddity of effect, and to make its 
style in detail a favorite matter of study to those who 
love linguistics. 



248 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Distinct in effect from any of the other comedies, 
on account of this palpable incongruity of style, All's 
Well That Ends Well resembles them in its general 
economy of invention. The main situation — of a 
woman making love to a man — occurs both in the 
relations of Phoebe to Rosalind in As You Like It, 
and in those of Olivia to Viola in Tioelfth Night. The 
device by which Helena finally secures her husband is 
clearly repeated in Measure for Measure, while the 
business of the ring is repeated from the last act of 
the Merchant of Venice. Parolles is a curious combi- 
nation of Pistol and Falstaff ; his relations to Bertram 
being almost a repetition of Falstaff' s to the Prince. 
Helena's original scheme involves considerable self- 
deception ; her final stratagem involves mistaken iden- 
tity. The further we look, in short, the more familiar 
matter we find. 

Whether All '* Well That Ends Well be a revision 
of Love's Labour 's Won, or not, then, it is clearly a 
play of which part was made early, and part late ; 
a play, too, where the later part has many traces of 
Shakspere's general manner about 1601. We may 
fairly guess, accordingly, that if the play were ever 
finished in its older form, it may probably have 
expressed no more serious view of life than the 
Two Gentlemen of Verona, whose motive is remotely 
similar. The passages which give it more signifi- 
cance are almost all in the later style. 

While its incongruity and consequent lack of finish 
make AWs Well That Ends Well a clearly less serious 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 249 

work of art than the plays near which we place it, 
the mood which it expresses deserves our full atten- 
tion. Up to this point when Shakspere has dealt 
with love, he has always been romantic. He has 
shown us some rather worthless lovers, to be sure : 
Proteus is highly unsympathetic ; Romeo, for all his 
charm, is neither vigorous nor constant ; and Bassa- 
nio, when we analyze his conduct, is anything but 
heroic. Throughout Shakspere's love-scenes, in fact, 
we have trace after trace of some such fascinating, 
volatile youth as seems to have inspired the first series 
of sonnets. Of all the lot, however, none is more vola- 
tile and less fascinating, none more pitifully free 
from romantic heroism, than Bertram. What makes 
All 'a Well That Ends Well notable for us, in short, 
is that its love passages plainly reveal a sense of the 
mysterious mischiefs which must flourish in this world 
as long as men are men and women are women. So 
remote is this mood from the old one of romantic 
sentiment or romantic happiness that for all the 
romantic fidelity of Helena to her worthless husband, 
one feels Shakspere to be treating the fact of love 
with a cynical irony almost worthy of a modern 
Frenchman. 

Even though All 's Well That Ends Well be perhaps, 
then, like the Richards and the Merry Wives of Wind- 
sor, the careless work of a moment or of moments 
when Shakspere's chief energy was busy elsewhere, 
it is significant because it definitely expresses a mood 
not hitherto found in his plays. Restless one feels 



250 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

this mood, unsettled, unserene, unbeautiful. There 
is no other work of Shakspere's which in conception 
and in temper seems quite so corrupt as this, where 
we are asked to give our full sympathy to Bertram. 
There are other works of Shakspere which are more 
painful ; there are none less pleasing, none on which 
one cares less to dwell. No other, however, more 
clearly reveals a sense which, as distinctly as the 
sense of irony which we found in Julius Ccesar, char- 
acterizes the coming work of Shakspere. This sense, 
abundantly evident in the Sonnets, but not shown 
in the plays we have read before, is a sense of the 
deplorable, fascinating, distracting mystery which 
throughout human history is involved in the fact of 
sexual passion, 

The irony of fate underlies the mood of Julius 
Ccesar; under the mood of All's Well That Ends 
Well lies the miserable mystery of earthly love. 
These motives we shall find henceforth again and 



IV. Hamlet. 

[The Revenge of Hamlett Prince of Denmark was entered in the 
Stationers' Register on July 26th, 1602. In 1603 the Tragical! Histo- 
ric of Hamlet Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare was pub- 
lished in quarto. This obviously imperfect quarto was probably 
pirated. Whether it represents an earlier version of the play or is 
a mutilated version of the whole, remains uncertain. In 1604 appeared 
a second quarto, which shows the play in substantially its final form. 
There were subsequent quartos in 1605 and in 1611. Above twenty 
allusions to Hamlet between 1604 and 1616 have been discovered. 



HAMLET 251 

There is evidence that a play on this subject, which Mr. Fleaj be< 
lieves to have been by Kvd, existed as early as 1589. What relation 
this old play bore to Shakspere's, and whether he had a hand in it, 
remain matters of dispute. 

The story, originally told by Saxo Grammaticus, a thirteenth-centuiy 
chronicle, was, told in French by Belleforest, of whose version an Eng- 
lish translation was published in 1608. This translation very probably 
existed earlier. 

Conjectures as to the date of the finished play range from 1601 ta 
1603.] 

By common verdict — a different thing from fact — 
Hamht is held to be Shakspere's masterpiece. While 
thus positively to grade any work of art is uncritical, 
we may safely say that Hamlet has given rise to more 
speculation, to a wider range of thought and com- 
ment, than any other single work in English litera- 
ture. In all modern literature, indeed, its only rival 
in this respect is Goethe's Faust, a poem not yet old 
enough for us to be sure of its permanent character. 
Hamlet, then, stands by itself. 

In spite of all this comment, Hamlet remains a 
puzzle, always unsolved, constantly suggestive. Critic 
after critic asks what it means ; and each has a new 
answer. There are endless minor questions, too : was 
Hamlet mad, for example ? was Ophelia chaste ? The 
mass of comment grows bewildering, benumbing. In 
despair, one puts it aside, turning straight to the text ; 
for, after all, the chief thing is not that we should de- 
fine the play, but that we should know it ; and Ham- 
let is a play which everybody ought to know. It is 
surely the work in English Literature to which allu- 
sions are most constant and most widely intelligible. 



252 WILLIAM SHAKSPERR 

Reading it again and again, you begin to find that you 
may know it none the less because, for all your read- 
ing, it remains inscrutable. 

Inscrutable though Hamlet remain, however, certain 
facts about it transpire for whoever considers it coolly. 
To begin with, in origin and in plot it is clearly a 
conventional tragedy of blood : the old king has been 
murdered ; Polonius, the Queen, the King, Laertes, 
and Hamlet, are killed on the stage ; and Ophelia, 
though she dies out of sight, is buried in the presence 
of the audience. Again, if we did not detect the fact 
for ourselves, the very title of the entry in the Station- 
ers' Register — the Revenge of Hamlet, etc. — would 
remind us that the play belongs to that class of trage- 
dies of blood, such as we glanced at in discussing 
Julius Ccesar, where a crime is revenged by the in- 
tervention of a murdered ghost. Considered as an 
Elizabethan play, then, Hamlet is substantially con- 
ventional. 

Its effect, on the other hand, is as far from con- 
ventional as possible. While retaining traces enough 
of its origin to remain full of dramatic action, it carries 
on this action not like the old tragedies of blood and 
revenge by means of ranting lay figures, but by means 
of characters as individual as any in literature. The 
individuality of these characters, however, is always 
subordinated to the main dramatic motive ; one reason 
why things happen as they do is that these people are 
temperamentally just what they are. Nor does the 
subordination of detail to purpose cease here. Sur- 



HAMLET 253 

prisingly few speeches in Hamlet lack dramatic fitness ; 
whatever is said generally helps either to advance the 
action or to define some character by means of which 
the action is advanced. The speeches, then, each 
having its proper place in an artistic scheme, are not 
essentially salient. Despite their dramatic fitness, 
though, these speeches contain so many final phrases, 
and such a wealth of aphorism, that the stale joke 
is justified which declares the text of Hamlet to con- 
sist wholly of familiar quotations. This wonderfully 
finished detail of style, an infallible symptom of 
thoroughly studied art, is what chiefly gives Ham- 
let the suggestive, mysterious quality which we all 
recognize. 

How carefully artistic Hamlet is, and at the same 
time how full of indications that it is only a develop- 
ment from an archaic original of which palpable traces 
remain, has been best pointed out, perhaps, in a study 
still unpublished, — the Sohier Prize Essay, on the 
Elizabethan Hamlet, written in 1893, by Mr. John 
Corbin, of Harvard University. How the original 
Ghost was wildly ranting ; how some of the scenes 
which puzzle people most, such as the great scene 
between Hamlet and Ophelia, 1 may best be under- 
stood when we realize them once to have been con- 
ventionally comic ; how Hamlet's very madness was 
probably intended to make the audience laugh, and so 
on, Mr. Corbin has made clear in a way which must 
surely be recognized when his essay finally appears. 

1 III. i. 90-157. 



254 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Something of the process by which the final form of 
Hamlet grew may be guessed by comparing the per- 
manent version with Belleforest and with the quarto 
of 1603. 

In Belleforest, for example, the lady who at times 
answers to Ophelia is a person of easy morals, em- 
ployed to ferret out Hamlet's secretin a manner which 
reminds one of the gossip concerning the relations of 
Fanny Ellsler and the Due de Reichstadt. In Hamlet, 
by a refinement of taste peculiar to Shakspere among 
Elizabethan dramatists, much of this situation is trans- 
ferred to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, while Ophelia 
retains hardly any trace of her origin. In the quarto 
of 1603, again, Hamlet's soliloquy, and his great scene 
with Ophelia occur in what we now call the second act, 
before his first interview with Rosencrantz and Guil- 
denstern, 1 instead of in the third act, where their 
dramatic effect is probably greater. Such transposi- 
tion, however and whenever made, is just the sort of 
thing which occurs when any novelist or dramatist is 
trying to improve his work. The difference between 
the opening speeches in the two versions is more nota- 
ble still. Here is the version of 1603 : — 

" Enter two Centinels. 

1. Stand : who is that ? 

2. 'T is I. 

1. you come most carefully upon your watch. 

2. And if you meet Marcellus and Horatio, 

The partners of my watch, bid them make haste." 

1 Between II. ii. 167, and II. ii. 172. 



HAMLET 255 

Similar as this seems to the final version, it is com- 
paratively lifeless. The sentinel on watch, seeing 
some one approach, challenges him, who declares 
himself to be the relief-guard. Clearly nothing- 
could be more commonplace. Now turn to the final 
version : — 

" Francisco at his post, Enter to him Bernardo. 

Ber. Who 's there ? 

Fran. Nay, answer me : stand, and unfold yourself. 

Ber. Long live the king! 

Fran. Bernardo ? 

Ber. He. 

Fran. You come most carefully upon your hour. 

Ber. Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco. 

Fran. For this relief much thanks: 't is bitter cold, 
And I am sick at heart. 

Ber. Have you had quiet guard ] 

Fran. Not a mouse stirring. 

Ber. Well, good night. 

If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, 

The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste." 

At first this scene looks like the other. On scrutiny, 
however, you see that the opening challenge is trans- 
posed from the mouth of the sentinel on watch, who 
ought to give it, to that of the relieving sentinel, who 
ought not to. In a moment, you see why. Bernardo, 
the relieving sentinel, knows that the ghost is astir ; 
and seeing a figure in the dark gives the challenge, in 
a fright which pervades all his speeches. Francisco, 
the sentinel on watch, knowing nothing of the ghost, 
only feels cold. Such a change as this, however and 



256 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

whenever made, is the kind of change by which a 
skilful artist, with a mere touch of the pen, dispels 
commonplace. 

Such evidence as this tends to confirm the opinion 
that the quarto of 1603 is a mutilated version of 
Shakspere's own earlier work, and that the final 
Hamlet represents his last revision of it. The differ- 
ences between the two are generally such as a great 
imaginative artist, more and more imbued with the 
artistic significance of his subject, would introduce by 
way of refinement, finish, adaptation. 

Canting as artistic significance may sound, the 
phrase probably contains the clew to Hamlet. Every 
one knows the tragedy to be full of endless, fascinat- 
ing, suggestive mystery. Critic after critic has tried 
to solve this mystery, to demonstrate what it signi- 
fies. Abandon this effort, and you will see the whole 
subject in a new and a clearer light. Once for all, 
there is no need for any solution of Hamlet; as it 
stands, the tragedy finally expresses the mood of an 
artist who has no answer for the problems which rise 
before him. 

Hamlet, indeed, we may believe to have developed 
in some such manner as we detected when we consid- 
ered the character of Falstaff. 1 In him we could 
faintly trace a conventional old satire on the Puritan 
hero, Oldcastle. This, we conceived, Shakspere meant 
to reproduce, much as in King John he had repro- 
duced from an old play the Bastard Faulconbridge. 
1 Seep. 167-171. 



HAMLET 257 

The change from this traditional Oldcastle we conceived 
to be spontaneous. The conventionally burlesqued 
Puritan we conceived, of its own accord, to grow into 
something so remote from its origin that the epilogue 
could truly say, " Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is 
not the man." 1 Imagine the same process here. The 
old tragedy of blood possesses the imagination of the 
poet, perhaps for years. What it means, what it sig- 
nifies, he, as an artist, neither knows nor cares. To 
an artist, thus possessed, the vital question is not what 
his conceptions mean, but what they are. They grow 
within him, they will not let him rest ; he must speak 
them out, must tell what they are. That very process 
for the moment exhausts him ; it is all he cares about ; 
for himself it is enough. 

For critical students, like us, however, the case is 
otherwise. Not knowing the artistic mood sponta- 
neously, we must perforce ask ourselves not only what 
it is but what it means. Without such guidance as 
should come from answers to this question, which very 
probably involves matters of which the artist never 
was aware, we may fail to understand him. 

In Hamlet, then, one notable trait appears for the 
first time. Whatever else we find in the tragedy, 
we surely find an activity of intellect which at first 
seems superhuman. Putting wonder aside, however, 
and asking whether, in real life, we have met anything 
like it, we discover a startling answer close at hand. 
Any of us must have known people whose tremendous 

1 See p. 172. 

17 



258 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

mental activity makes them, in comparison with every- 
day mortals, seem divinely gifted ; and most of us 
must have become aware that such a trait indicates, 
in the stock which breeds it, a marked tendency to 
insanity. In other words, there are always people 
about us whose minds have the diseased activity, 
without the aberration, of mania. Such a mind wrote 
Hamlet. 

At the same time, as distinguished from men who 
display the vagaries of genius, Shakspere was always 
exceptionally sane. The trait which balanced his 
abnormal activity of intellectual perception was an 
equally active and pervasive power of reflection. 
Whatever he perceived, he could consider, could com- 
ment on. Besides, as we have seen before, he was by 
this time a consummate artist ; and artistic expression, 
involving a deliberate severance of personality within 
the artist himself, 1 is often what saves men of genius 
from Bedlam. With one part of their being they 
may yield to all the ecstasy of divine madness; with 
another, they must contemplate and phrase the mad- 
dening thoughts and feelings which surge within them, 
preserving, in spite of all, the cool cunning which mas- 
ters technical obstructions. 

Such tremendous activity, mastered and controlled 
by equally tremendous power, infuses every line of 
Hamlet ; yet in Hamlet it always subserves a constant 
emotional purpose. The resulting state of the poet's 
mind is best indicated perhaps by the words of a" critic 

1 See p. 228. 



HAMLET 259 

who, having known the tragedy for thirty years, and 
having loved it passionately, declared that from the 
beginning he had never once been able to think of it 
without a faint, lurking consciousness of some un- 
phrased musical cadence beneath it all. Beneath it, 
then, he for one could perceive some fundamental 
emotion which no language can express, — something 
so ethereally beyond the range of what all men realize 
that it cannot be couched in any vehicle so definite as 
words. Words, he found, could help him no farther 
than when he called this emotion a quivering sense of 
the eternal mystery of tragic fate. 

A sense of tragic fate, then, in all its horror — 
not the balanced, judicial fate of the Greeks, but the 
passionate, stormy, Christianized fate of Romantic 
Europe — underlies the mood which Hamlet would 
express. Men are the sport of such fate : thought, 
emotion, conduct, life in all its aspects, are alike at 
the mercy of this unspeakable, inexorable force. 
Yet, all the while, these very men, whirled onward 
though they be toward and through the portals of 
eternity, must think, must feel, must act, must live ; 
to others and even to themselves they must seem, 
even though they may never truly be, the responsible 
masters of themselves. This is the fact which the 
maker of Hamlet contemplated. The reaction which 
stirred within him from this contemplation was a pas- 
sionate, restless acknowledgment of endless, unfathom- 
able mystery. No words can quite phrase it ; perhaps 
none can phrase it better than some fragmentary lines 



260 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

from Hamlet's great soliloquy, — all the truer to our 
elusive meaning if we leave them subjectless : — 

" Puzzles the will, 
And makes us rather bear those ills we have 
Than fly to others that we know not of." * 

The ills we have, all the while, we know with an 
intensity of suffering hardly to be borne. Chief 
among them are those which spring from the fact 
that men are men and women are women. It is no 
intentional evil-doing which has led the King and the 
Queen to their grim career of incest and murder ; it 
is rather that, being the mortals they are, they have 
lived and done their deeds in a world where damning 
sin held them in its toils. And Ophelia is a woman, 
and Hamlet is a man, and therein lies the seed of 
the ills we have, and the ills to come. A knowl- 
edge of these ills, perceived with the keenness of an 
intellect alive to the very utmost limits of human ken, 
underlies the mood of Hamlet. Were not the master- 
mind, too, artistically alert to the utmost limits of 
human power, it could not have phrased, with an art 
at once ultimately dramatic and ultimately poetic, and 
with a philosophic insight which seems illimitable, this 
mood whose depth of mystery is best proved by the 
truth that throughout the centuries it remains mys- 
terious. Fateful, passionate, inscrutable, — such is 
the life which Hamlet sets forth. 

Was Hamlet mad ? critic after critic has asked. 
In all human probability, Shakspere himself could 
i III. i. 80. 



HAMLET 261 

have answered the question no better than we. 
Artists know less of what they do not tell us than 
inartistic critics give them credit for ; Thackeray, 
they say, was never quite sure how far Becky Sharp 
had gone with Lord Steyne. How Hamlet may have 
presented himself to Shakspere, is aptly suggested in 
a note by Mr. Greene * : — 

" Perhaps Shakspere hardly recognized that Hamlet was 
essentially not a chronicle-history. He applied his realistic, 
his 'objective' method persistently; and with his own 
pessimistic temper at the time he produced what had been 
only hinted at in Julius Caesar, — a psychologic tragedy. 
There is little formal analysis; only aspects are depicted; 
but our interest centres on the mental states which cause 
those aspects. The fact that Shakespere has kept to the 
'objective' method accounts for the puzzling character of 
the work. A real man lives in Shakspere's brain, and 
speaks, and acts. Why he so speaks and acts we can only 
guess — and Shakspere can only guess. Therefore the 
question as to the true nature of Hamlet's character is 
essentially insoluble." 

Of only one thing concerning Hamlet, indeed, may we 
feel sure. So unfathomable is his range of thought and 
emotion that actor after actor can play the part with 
masterly intelligence, and each can be different from 
any other Poetic Booth, for example, sad Lawrence 
Barrett, demoniacally witty Henry Irving, romantic 
Mounet-Sully are as unlike as any four human beings 

1 Whose kindness is acknowledged in the introductory Note to this 
book. 



262 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

can be ; yet in none can you find a trait unauthorized 
by the text. Fateful, passionate, inscrutable, — such 
seems Hamlet to himself, such to his impersonators ; 
and such, we may believe, he seemed to his creator. 
Slight as this treatment of Hamlet is, and surely 
neglectful though it be of endless facts and theories 
which even superficial students of the subject are 
bound to know and to consider, it should serve our 
purpose. Our business, after all, is not to fathom the 
depths of Hamlet, but only to assure ourselves of 
Hamlet's relation to Shakspere's development as an 
artist. In it we have found many traces of his old 
methods of thought and work. In it, too, we have 
found again both the profound sense of irony so unpas- 
sionately set forth in Julius Ccesar, and the knowledge 
of what evil comes from the fact of sex so cynically 
set forth in All 's Well that Ends Well. In it, further- 
more, we have found a terrible activity of roused in- 
tellect which in a less balanced nature might have led 
to madness. In it, finally, we have found a Shakspere 
different, in his whole artistic nature, from the Shaks- 
pere whom we have known hitherto ; for here at last 
we find him, in the full ripeness of his power, passion- 
ately facing the everlasting mysteries, and, for all his 
greatness, as little able as the least of us to phrase an 
answer to their eternal enigma. 



MEASURE FOR MEASURE 263 



V. Measure for Measure. 

[Measure for Measure was first entered in 1623, and first published 
in the folio ; but according to Mr. Fleay, 1 it was acted at court in 
December, 1604. 

The main outline of the story — without the episode of Mariana, 
whom Shakspere substitutes at a crucial moment for the original 
heroine, — exists in Whetstone's Promus and Cassandra, published in 
1578, and in his Pentameron, published in 1582. It is based on the 
Italian of Cinthio's Hecatommithi. 

From internal evidence — allusions and style combined, — Measure 
for Measure has been conjecturally assigned to 1603 or 1604.] 

At first sight, Measure for Measure, like so many 
other of Shakspere's plays, seems strongly individ- 
ual. Its general effect, certainly, — the mood into 
which it throws you, — is unique : a little considera- 
tion, however, reveals, in both its motive and its 
method, the economy of invention so characteristic of 
Shakspere. 

In Julius Coesar, as we have seen, he expressed very 
plainly the sense of irony which now for a while so 
pervades his artistic feeling. In All 's Well that Ends 
Well, he expressed his equally persistent sense that 
while men remain men and women remain women, 
there will surely be trouble. In Hamlet lie expressed 
a fiercely passionate sense of the mystery which hangs 
over life, wherein the two preceding motives remain 
constant. In Measure for Measure all these motives 

1 Life, 235. 



264 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

reappear : the slightest consideration of the story of 
A-iigelo will reveal the two first ; the prison scene, 1 
particularly when Claudio shudders in the face of 
death, 2 will reveal something of the last. So, too, 
more subtly but just as surely, we find in Measure for 
Measure the motives which underlie both series of the 
Sonnets : Claudio is another example of such fasci- 
nating youth and weakness as may have inspired the 
first series ; and, though in the serious parts we have no 
actively evil woman, the stories of Isabella, of Mariana, 
and of Juliet, constantly suggest the evils which arise 
from the fascinating fact of sex. What makes Measure 
for Measure seem individual, then, is not that its mo- 
tives are new, but that they are newly combined ; they 
differ from the old not in kind, but in proportion. 
Here, for example, the irony, while far more passionate 
than that of Julius Caesar, lacks the overwhelming in- 
tensity which marks it in Samlet. Here, too, the sense 
of sexual evil is at once more profound than that of 
All 's Well that Ends Well, and so firmly set forth that 
you feel its greater depth to imply more certain in- 
sight. Here, finally, while there is no direct self- 
revelation, the frequent analogies to the moods 
expressed in the Sonnets go far to make you feel that 
the mood of Measure for Measure is unstudied, spon- 
taneous, sincere. 

In the matter of dramatic detail, even to many of 
the speeches, Measure for Measure is almost re- 
capitulatory. The old stage situations and devices of 

1 III. i. 2 118 seq. 



MEASURE FOR MEASURE 265 

the comedies — mistaken identity and self-deception — 
are persistently used. Their effect, however, is no 
longer comic. The disguised Duke is a very different 
figure from a girlish heroine in a page's hose and 
doublet. Still more, Angelo is a very different figure 
from Malvolio, or Benedick, or Falstaff. By almost 
any other Elizabethan dramatist, indeed, he might 
have been made ribaldly amusing. Imagine him, and 
his situation on the modern French stage, and you will 
see for yourself what a chance for loose fun they afford. 
That this chance is neglected, that Angelo is rather a 
tragic figure than a comic, is deeply characteristic both 
of Shakspere and of this moment in his career. 
Recapitulation, with due variation, however, does 
not end with such general matters as these. The 
career and the fate of Lucio are closely akin to those 
of Parolles and of Falstaff, just as his ribald chat has 
something in common with Mercutio's. Clearly, too, 
Mariana simply revives the Diana of All 's Well that 
Ends Well ; and Claudio, at least in his weakness, has 
much in common with Bertram. The last acts of 
these two plays, furthermore, are so much alike that 
this portion of All 's Well that Ends Well might almost 
be regarded as a study for this portion of Measure for 
Measure. 

Even more notable, however, is the reminiscent, if 
not exactly recapitulatory, flavor of many actual 
speeches. This is so marked that we may to advan- 
tage compare two passages from Measure for Measure 
with similar ones from earlier works. 



266 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

The first of these passages is that where Isabella 
pleads for mercy on Claudio ; it instantly suggests 
Portia's more familiar plea for mercy with Shylock. 
Here is Portia's : *■ — 

" The quality of mercy is not strain'd, 
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath : it is twice blest ; 
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes : 
'T is mightiest in the mightiest : it becomes 
The throned monarch better than his crown ; 
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, 
The attribute to awe and majesty, 
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings ; 
But mercy is above this sceptred sway ; 
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings. 
It is an attribute to God himself; 
And earthly power doth then show likest God's 
When mercy seasons justice." 

Here is Isabella's plea with Angelo : 2 — 

" No ceremony that to great ones 'longs, 
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, 
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe, 
Become them with one half so good a grace 
As mercjr does. 

If he had been as you and you as he, 
You would have slipt like him ; but he, like you, 
Would not have been so stern. 



Alas, alas ! 
Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once ; 
And He that might the vantage best have took 
Found out the remedy. How would you be, 

1 Merchant of Venice, IV. i. 184 seq. 

2 II. ii. 59 seq. 



MEASURE FOR MEASURE 267 

If He, which is the top of judgement, should 
But judge you as you are 1 0, think on that ; 
And mercy then will breathe within your lips, 
Like man new made." 

The second passage from Measure for Measure 
which here deserves attention is Claudio's speech on 
death, which resembles Hamlet's great soliloquy, 1 — 

" To be or not to be," etc. 

A few lines should serve to remind every one of 
that : — 

" To die : to sleep ; 
No more ; and by a sleep to say we end 
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to, 't is a consummation 
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep ; 
To sleep : perchance to dream : ay, there 's the rub ; 
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come 
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 
Must give us pause : there 's the respect 
That makes calamity of so long life. 



Who would fardels bear, 
To grunt and sweat under a weary life, 
But that the dread of something after death, 
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn 
No traveller returns, puzzles the will 
And makes us rather bear those ills we have 
Than fly to others that we know not of." 

Compare with this Claudio's speech : 2 — 

" Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; 
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot ; 

i Hamlet, III. i. 56 seq. 2 III. i. 118 seq. 



268 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

This sensible warm motion to become 
A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice ; 1 
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, 
And blown with restless violence round about 
The pendent world ; or to lie worse than worst 
Of those that lawless and incertain thought, 
Imagine howling: 2 't is too horrible ! 
The weariest and most loathed worldly life 
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment 
Can lay on nature is a paradise 
To what we fear of death." 



With less direct quotation, it would have been hard 
to make clear a distinct difference, in something more 
tangible than mood or temper, between Measure for 
Measure and the plays we have considered before. 
The passages we have just read are enough alike to 
demonstrate that the very style of Measure for Measure 
has a certain heaviness which we have not met hither- 
to. The comparison also suggests that the change is 
due to increased activity of thought. Unimpulsively, 
but intensely and constantly, reflective, the mind which 
wrote Measure for Measure was actually overburdened 
with things to say. Here, then, we have a fresh 
symptom of the abnormal mental activity which per- 
vades Hamlet. It reveals itself now in a compactness 
of style hitherto strange to Shakspere. The passages 

1 Compare these five lines, too, with the Ghost's speech, — Hamlet, 
I. v. 9-20. 

2 Cf. Hamlet, V. i. 265. 



MEASURE FOR MEASURE 269 

just quoted arc by no means the most compact of 
Measure for Measure, which often becomes positively 
obscure. One feels at last as if Shakspere's abnormal 
activity of mind, prevented by his lack of inventive 
power from dashing into regions foreign to his older 
experience, were writhing about every concept he had, 
striving with the linear vehicle of language to enwrap 
elusive solidity of thought. While not constant here- 
after, this trait is henceforth, characteristic of Shaks- 
pere's style. 

Taking all these considerations together, we find in 
the mood of Measure for Measure a normal reaction 
from the passionate sense of mystery so wonderfully 
phrased in Hamlet. Tacitly assuming, as usual, the 
conventional ideals of virtue and of life still instinctive 
to the normal English mind, Shakspere faces the fact 
of sexual passion. Like the fate which Hamlet faces, 
the thing is at once mysterious and evil. In Hamlet 
Shakspere expressed his sense of the mystery ; in 
Measure for Measure he expresses his sense of the 
evil. Here his dominant mood is grimly contempla- 
tive, almost consciously philosophic. No more than 
in Hamlet can he offer any solution of the dreadful 
mystery ; but he can state fact, and can comment on it 
inexhaustibly. The mood is a mood of reaction, — of 
slumbering passion, but of enormous, sombre latent 
feeling. 

Strangely enough, this mood has much in common 
with a potent contemporary mood which has left a 
widely different record, — the Calvinistic philosophy 



270 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

of the Puritans. As with them, life is a positively 
evil thing, made up of sin, of weakness, of whatever 
else should deserve damnation. Fate is overpower- 
ing ; pure ideals are bent and broken in conflict with 
fact ; and, above all, sexual love is a vast, evil mystery. 
Even though, here and there, a gleam of persist- 
ent purity suggest the possibility of rare, capricious 
election, most men are bound by the very law of 
their being to whirl headlong toward merited damna- 
tion. In Measure for Measure — so strangely named 
a comedy — one may constantly find this unwitting 
exposition of Calvinism, with no gleam of hopeful 
solution. This evil fact is the real world ; see it, hate 
it, grimly laugh at it if you can and will ; God knows 
what it means ; all we know is that it can surely mean 
no good. Meamvhile, however, it can afford us end- 
less material for comment ; and comment is essentially 
anaesthetic. 

So this mood, after all not peculiar to Shakspere, 
but a mood very potent throughout his time, takes its 
place between the moods which his work has already 
expressed and the moods which are to come. Deeper 
and deeper insight they show into the depths of human 
experience ; but not a spiritual insight which pierces 
higher and higher. 



TROILUS AND CEESSIDA 271 



VI. Troilus and Cressida. 

[On February 7th, 1603, Troilus and Cressida, " as it is acted by my 
Lord Chamberlain's men," was entered in the Stationers' Register, to 
he published by one James Roberts, " when he hath gotten sufficient 
authority for it." This authority seems never to have been gotten, for 
no further mention of Troilus and Cressida occurs until January 28th, 
1609, when it was again entered in the Stationers' Register. During 
the same year it was twice published in quarto, as " Written by William 
Shakespeare ; " in the first of these quartos is an apparently mendacious 
preface, suppressed in the second, stating that the play was " never 
stafd with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palnies of the 
vulger." In the folio of 1623, Troilus and Cressida is printed between 
the histories and the tragedies, and it does not appear at all in the 
general list of plays. Apparently the editors could not decide how to 
classify it. 

Its sources are evidently the mediaeval versions of the story of Troy, 
of which the most notable in English is Chaucer's Troilus and Creseide. 
Possibly it may have some connection with Chapman's Homer. 

Conjectures as to the date of the play vary widely. From the evi- 
dence stated, as well as on other grounds, many are now disposed to 
think that the plan of the play is very early, that an acting version of 
it, similar to the final one, was produced about 1602, and that the 
whole thing was revived about 1609. In the squabbles of the Grecian 
heroes Mr. Fleay : believes that we may detect allusions to theatrical 
squabbles prevalent in London about 1602.] 

Just when, or how, or why Troilus and Cressida was 
written nobody knows ; yet clearly, we must put it 
somewhere. For one thing, then, the very fact that 
in so many aspects it is puzzling might incline us 
fantastically to group it with plays whose chief trait 

1 Life, 220-224. 



272 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

is that they express a puzzled, indeterminate mood. 
Besides, whatever doubts may exist about Troilus and 
Cressida, there can be no doubt that it deals with both 
of the motives just now so palpable in Shakspere's 
work, — the irony of fate and the mischief which 
women make. Again, while it displays nothing which 
may fairly be called exhaustion, it has throughout 
such a quality of creative inertia as we have seen to 
characterize work done by Shakspere when his best 
energy was concentrated elsewhere. Finally, while 
the character of Cressida has an obvious likeness to 
that of Cleopatra, which might warrant us in placing 
this play near that of which Cleopatra is heroine, it 
has an equal and less generally recognized likeness to 
the character of Desdemona. Taken together, these 
considerations — none of them very cogent — perhaps 
warrant us in considering Troilus and Cressida before 
Othello. 

Palpable in the very construction of Troilus and 
Cressida, the least dramatic of Shakspere's plays, the 
puzzling quality pervades it everywhere. Of late cer- 
tain critics have wondered whether it be not deliber- 
ately satirical ; certainly, they say, Shakspere, dealing 
with a heroic subject, carefully refrains from making 
anybody in the least heroic. However agreeable to 
modern ways of thinking, such a view is hardly con- 
sonant with Elizabethan temper. It were more rational 
to say that in this case Shakspere has really done afresh 
what he has done all along : he has translated into 
dramatic form material which he found in narrative ; 



OTHELLO 279 

Such Othello certainly is ; just as surely it is also 
what commonplaces call it, — the supreme tragedy of 
jealousy. Everything in the play tends to set forth 
this lasting fact of human nature. There is no under 
plot ; hardly any scenes do not bear directly on the 
story ; there is less discursive matter than we find 
almost anywhere else. Naturally, then, we think of 
this broadly handled tragedy of character, dealing so 
consummately with an absorbing human passion, as a 
thing apart in the work of Shakspere ; or at least as 
related to his other work by little else than its pas- 
sionate conception and its masterly handling. 

Only after we are free from the spell which, whether 
we read or see Othello, the play must cast upon us, 
can we trace its relations to other works. After a 
while, the similarity of its general motive to the story 
of Claudio and Hero and Don John, in Much Ado 
About Nothing, begins to appear ; and we find Shaks- 
pere once more presenting old matter in a new light. 
The new light, however, makes the matter seem new. 
"What this light is has been suggestively stated by 
Mr. Young : — 

"The mood [of Othello] seems to me something more 
than jealousy and the agony of it, — it seems a sense of 
the power of sexual love as a motive force in life. The 
subject-matter of many of the preceding plays, it may he 
recalled, was chiefly concerned with this passion in its 
darker aspects. Shakspere\s mind, it may he said safehy 
enough, had dwelt on this subject. The result was a pi-etty 
clear perception of the nature of this passion, of its differ- 



282 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

u the most striking illustration of this attempted reaction. 
Iago is undoubtedly built up from the conventional villain. 
The traces of the original are still evident in his essential 
devilishness. Crime is pleasant to him. I will not assert 
that such a man cannot exist; but I know that he is im- 
probable. Shakspere, however, started out with him, and 
having done so imagined him so really . . . that he is plau- 
sible. Shakspere gives him motives not strong enough for 
a healthy mind ; they are not enough to make him real. 
His cynical worldly wisdom, though, added to his appa- 
rent blunt honesty, makes him alive as a thinker, in spite 
of his conventional origin . . . and of the frequently con- 
ventional method by which Shakspere treats him. Iago 
is made to go into direct self-revelation by monologue to 
an exaggerated extent ; . . . and yet Iago is alive. This 
life comes from the things which Iago says and does that 
astound you by the absolute certainty that he, not Shaks- 
pere, did or said them. For instance, when the fiend 
kneels with Othello * we are astonished, while we know 
that he did it. Shakspere's insight is what saves the 
play, and, indeed, keeps the careless reader from guessing 
how nearly it is a conventional gore-piece/' 

This criticism touches on a phase of Iago which is 
not generally noticed. His motives, it says, are not 
strong enough for a healthy mind. As Mr. Young's 
criticism suggested, indeed, the Iago of Shakspere 
has distinctly less motive than the character in Cin- 
thio's novel from which he is developed ; that per- 
sonage was possessed by the passion for his general's 
wife which Shakspere has transferred to the witless 

i III. iii. 461. 



OTHELLO 283 

Roderigo. Yet in this drama of which the chief 
trait is concentration, Iago, for all his lack of mo- 
tive, seems concentration personified. Diabolical, one 
feels like calling him, — diabolical both in the inhu- 
man activity of his intelligence and in the inhuman 
concentration of his almost motiveless evil purpose. 
Yet Iago is not a devil ; though horribly abnormal, 
he remains comprehensibly human. Not diabolical, 
then, but abnormal, we find him. It is only a step 
further to feel that his abnormal activity and abnor- 
mal concentration of mind are almost maniacal. 
Then look at his last speech : ! — 

" Demand me nothing : what you know, you know : 
From this time forth I never will speak word." 

Without being an expert in lunacy, one knows of the 
silent, glaring madmen. It is with figures like these 
that Iago ranges himself at last. 

The notion that Iago was mad would probably 
have been new to Shakspere. To Shakspere, Iago 
would probably have seemed, like Hamlet and Fal- 
staff and all the rest before him, only one of those 
mysterious creatures of imagination who somehow 
grow into independent existence. Hamlet, to be 
sure, might seem mad to some, who were welcome 
to think him so if they chose ; even Othello might 
seem swept by self-deluding passion beyond the verge 
of reason; but Iago — cool, cunning, shrewd — could 
never seem anything but an incarnation of diabolical 

1 V. ii. 303. 



284 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

intelligence. This very fact throws startling light 
on the state of Shakspere's mind. The Shakspere of 
Othello is quite as sane and as masterly as the Shaks- 
pere of Hamlet; but, like the Shakspere who created 
Hamlet, the Shakspere who created Iago sympatheti- 
cally understood, while at the same time he utterly 
controlled, a specific phase of madness. 

Here, then, is an analogy, both to Hamlet and to 
King Lear, which has not been generally remarked. 
Throughout the period of his great tragedies, Shaks- 
pere gave evidence, partly unwitting, that he under- 
stood madness. Such an analogy as this is probably 
too subtle to have been known to the man whose 
mental state it illustrates. An analogy of which, on 
the other hand, he might probably have been aware 
is that which has already been pointed out between 
Cressida and Desdemona. 1 In character, as well as 
aspect, Desdemona and Cressida have one common 
trait : both are untruthful. In Cressida the fact is 
constantly palpable ; in Desdemona one feels it less. 
Look at the indirectness of her coquetry, though, in 
half wooing Othello ; 2 look at Brabantio's last speech 
to her, 3 true enough to contain the seed of final evil ; 
look at her prevarication about the handkerchief. 4 
For all her tenderness and purity, Desdemona's word 
is not always to be trusted. There is something in 
her nature, as well as in her aspect, which groups her 
with the Trojan wanton, giving color to the slanders 

1 Seep. 275. 2 I. iii. 145-170. 

3 Ibid. 293. * III. iv. 23-29, 52-102. 



OTHKLLo 285 

of Iago. The more one studies these characters to- 
gether, the more alike they seem. 

Desdemona, however, is in no sense a repetition of 
Cressida. Like every other character in Othello she 
is completely individual. This thorough individuali- 
zation of character gives Othello its specific atmos- 
phere. The presence of so many real people involves 
a real world for them to live and move in. One asks 
no questions as to what or where this world is ; one 
accepts it ; and finally one grows aware that it is not 
only real, but actually foreign to England. Here we 
touch on one of the most marked traits of Othello. 
Exactly how one cannot say, the play is consummately 
Italian, — a more veracious piece of creative fiction 
than was ever made by all the scribblers of pedanti- 
cally accurate detail. In origin, of course, the plot is 
Italian ; the characters fit the plot so perfectly, that 
they and their background alike become Italian, too. 
See Othello played by an Italian company, and you 
will feel this more and more. For all that you lose the 
wonderful poetry of the lines, you often seem nearer 
the truth than any English actors can bring you. 

To lose the poetry of Othello, however, to lose any 
detail of its style, is to lose much. This style is very 
different from that of Measure for Measure, of Troilus 
and Cressida, and of other plays, still to come, where 
the lines are overcharged with meaning. Almost 
every line of Othello is so adapted to its purpose that 
we accept speech after speech as actual utterances. 
On consideration, however, we find that nobody has 



286 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

been speaking the plain dialect of daily life ; one 
and all the personages have sustained throughout 
the lasting elevation of poetry. The delight the style 
has given us, then, proves different from what we first 
thought it — or, better, more profound. Not only is 
every word in character, but every word also adds to 
the beauty of a noble tragic poem. No style could be 
theoretically better. 

The superficial simplicity of Othello strengthens 
the general impression which the play makes. By 
this time we have seen enough of Shakspere to un- 
derstand that some of his works seem more con- 
sciously self-revealing than others. In some, at 
least, one feels that he must have been aware of 
the underlying motive : as an artist, for example, 
whatever his private convictions, Shakspere must 
have realized the beauty of the Midsummer Nights 
Bream, the patriotic didacticism of Henry V., the 
passionate art of the Sonnets, the irony of Julius 
Caesar, the mystery of Hamlet, the grim philosophy 
of Measure for Measure. In other works, one feels 
that to Shakspere himself the effects detected by 
modern criticism would have been surprises ; his 
effort, one feels, was simply, with full control of 
his power, to express a mood or a fact which seemed 
wholly foreign to himself: such, for example, would 
be the sentimental tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, the 
romantic comedy of the Merchant of Venice, the un- 
controllable vitality of Falstaff. It is among these 
works, which to the artist we may suppose to have 



KING LEAK 28'i 

seemed thoroughly objective, that we may most rea- 
sonably class Othello. 

Objective and concentrated, then, we may believe 
Shakspere to have deemed this tremendous study of 
an isolated passion ; purely artistic in motive, beyond 
the plays lately considered. Modern analysis, how- 
ever, can discover in Othello unsuspected analogies 
to the work about it. One of these is its irony ; its 
constant dwelling on the mysteries of sex is another ; 
others still are the maniacal activity and concentra- 
tion of Iago, the Cressid-like surface of Desdemona, 
the fatal self-deception of Othello. Whatever be the 
truth of our chronology, in short, Othello is surely 
such a work as one might expect after Hamlet and 
Measure for Measure and Troilus and Gressicla. 



VIII. — King Lear. 

[" Master William Shakespeare his historye of Kinge Lear, as yt was 
played before the Kinges Majestie at Whitehall uppon Sainct Stephens 
night at Christmas last "was entered in the Stationers' Register on 
November 26th, 1607. The play thus entered was twice published in 
quarto during 1608. In each case the titlepage is peculiar, reading as 
follows : — 

" M. William Shakespeare, 

HIS 

True Chronicle History of the life 

and death of King Lear, and his 

three Daughters 

With the unfortunate life o/Edgar 

sonne and heire to the Earle of Glocester, and 

his sullen and assumed humour of Tom 

of Bedlam. 



288 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

At the head of the text is a similarly peculiar title : — 
" M. William Shake-speare 
HIS 
History, of King Lear." 

This unique emphasis on the name of Shakspere is probably due to the 
publication in 1605 of an old play, entered in the Stationers' Register 
on May 8, 1605, as "The Tragical History of King Leir and his three 
daughters, as it was lately acted ; " but really rather a comic than a 
tragic chronicle-history. This publication is believed to have been an 
attempt to avail of the popularity of Shakspere's play. 

The probable sources of Shakspere's King Lear are this old play 
and the chronicle of Holinshed , and, for the story of Gloster, the tale 
of the blind king of Paphlagonia in Sidney's Arcadia. The story of 
Lear, however, was familiar, existing in many early versions, of which 
the most familiar is Spenser's. 1 

From various internal evidence, together with the publication of the 
rival play, King Lear is generally assigned to 1605.] 

One is apt to forget that a play which seems so 
modern as Othello was made for the Elizabethan 
theatre. After Othello, then, we need some sharp 
reminder that this Shakspere whom we are study- 
ing could never have dreamt of such a stage or 
such a world as ours. We could have none sharper 
than we find in King Lear. 

Whether you read this great tragedy, or see it on 
the stage, the effect produced by any single and swift 
consideration of it must nowadays be one of murky, 
passionate, despairing confusion. The common an- 
swer to any consequent complaint, is that to appreciate 
King Lear you should study it. This is perfectly 
true. Equally true, however, is a fact not so often 

1 Faerie Queene, II. x. 27-32. 



KING LEAR 289 

emphasized : King Lear was certainly meant to be 
acted ; and when a play is acting neither players nor 
audience are at liberty to stop for reflective comment. 
Far more than a novel, or a poem, or any piece of 
pure literature, a play, which is made to be played 
straight through, must be conceived by both its maker 
and its audiences as a unit. In criticising any stage- 
play, this fact should never be forgotten. Whoever 
remembers it will probably continue to find King 
Lear, read or seen at a single sitting, magnificently 
confused. 

For this there are several obvious reasons. In the 
first place, the style of the play is overpacked with 
meaning ; in the second place, the situations are so 
often rather intellectually than visibly dramatic that 
to see them helps little toward their interpretation ; 
in the third place, the technical traits which probably 
made King Lear popular with Elizabethan audiences 
belong, far more than is usual in Shakspere's later 
work, to the obsolete conditions of Shakspere's time. 

Two or three examples may serve to emphasize the 
excessive compactness of King Lear. Perhaps none 
are more to our purpose than may be found in the 
trial by battle. 1 This clearly revives a situation pre- 
viously used with effect, — perhaps in the combat be- 
tween Hector and Ajax, 2 and certainly in the trial at 
arms between Hamlet and Laertes, and in the final 
struggle between Richard III. and Richmond. Dis- 

1 V. iii. 107-150. 

2 Trollus and Cressida, IV. v. 65-117. 

19 



290 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

tinctly the most elaborate previous use of it, however, 
and the use most similar to what we find here, occurred 
in Richard II. There the first 122 lines of the third 
scene are given to the trial by battle between Boling- 
broke and Norfolk. Every one of these lines is a 
sonorous piece of half-operatic verse ; though they do 
not mean much, they sound splendidly ; and no mat- 
ter how fast the actors should rattle them off, there is 
no serious danger of obscurity. The first challenge 1 
is a fair example of the whole scene : — 

" Mar. In God's name and the king's, say who thou art 
And why thou comest thus knightly clad in arms, 
Against what man thou comest, and what thy quarrel : 
Speak truly, on thy knighthood and thy oath ; 
As so defend thee heaven and thy valour ! 

Mow. My name is Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk; 
Who hither come engaged by my oath — 
Which God defend a knight should violate ! — 
Both to defend my loyalty and truth 
To God, my king and my succeeding issue, 
Against the Duke of Hereford that appeals me; 
And, by the grace of God and this mine arm, 
To prove him, in defending of myself, 
A traitor to my God, my king, and me: 
And as I truly fight, defend me heaven ! " 

Compare with this the challenge in King Lear : 2 — 
" Her. What are you ? 

Your name, your quality 1 and why you answer 
This present summons 1 

Edg. Know, my name is lost; 

By treason's tooth bare-gnawn and canker-bit : 
Yet am I noble as the adversary 
I come to cope." 
i Rich. IT. I. iii. 11-25. 2 V. iii. 119-124. 



KING LEAR 291 

A little later in the scene Edmund thus returns the 
lie to Edgar : : — 

"Back do I toss these treasons to thy head; 
With the hell-hated lie o'erwhelm thy heart; 
Which, for they yet glance by and scarcely bruise, 
This sword of mine shall give them instant way, 
Where they shall rest for ever. Trumpets, speak ! " 

Read these last two speeches as fast as an actor, 
duly counterfeiting the excitement of the moment, 
must give them, and you will find that they puzzle 
any hearer who does not know them by heart. The 
contrast shown by these quotations persists through- 
out the scenes in question. In Richard II. the trial 
by battle fills 122 lines, and even then only begins ; 
in 44 lines of King Lear, which involve vastly more 
dramatic expression of character than is found in the 
older scene, the trial by battle is carried to an end. 

Actual compactness, then, is one reason why the 
style of King Lear is at first glance obscure. Philoso- 
phizing thrown in with no dramatic purpose often 
deepens the obscurity. In the first scene of the 
fourth act, for example, Edgar enters and soliloquizes 
thus : — 

" Yet better thus, and known to be contemn'd, 
Than still contemn'd and flatter'd. To be worst, 
The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune, 
Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear : 
The lamentable change is from the best; 

1 Ibid. 146-150. 



292 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

The worst returns to laughter. Welcome, then, 
Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace ! 
The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst 
Owes nothing to thy blasts. But who comes here ? " 

In response to this cue, Gloster enters, blind, and 
led by an old man, to whom within a few lines he 

remarks : * — 

" I have no way, and therefore want no eyes; 
I stumbled when I saw : full oft 'tis seen, 
Our means secure us, and our mere defects 
Prove our commodities." 

Though any one can study out what these generali- 
zations mean, no human being could ever have guessed 
from a single hasty hearing ; yet, apart from their 
actual meaning, they have no dramatic use. The 
truth is that such detailed illustration of the obscurity 
which pervades King Lear was probably needless. 
Open the play anywhere, read a dozen lines, and you 
will find yourself either amazed by their concentrated 
significance, or puzzled by their excessive compact- 
ness. On the stage such a style could never have 
been effective. 

Ineffective on the stage, too, for all the intellec- 
tually dramatic strength of their conception, are 
many notable situations in King Lear. A single 
example will serve our purpose : take the great 
sixth scene of the third act, where mad King Lear, 
and his mournful Fool, and Edgar, who feigns mad- 
ness, sit together, like a court in bank, to judge 

1 Lines 20-23. 



KING LEAR 293 

an imaginary Goneril and Regan. However skilfully 
this be played, the grotesqueness of the three mad 
figures is bound to distract any modern mind from 
the tragic significance of the situation Yet, to any 
modern mind, the thought of regarding such a scene 
as grotesque is repellent. 

So we come to the third reason why King Lear is 
nowadays puzzling. The superficial grotesqueness of 
that very scene clearly suggests this reason. 

Glauce at the titlepage of the quarto. King Lear 
was evidently set forth as a chronicle-history ; and 
indeed it differs from what we still recognize as 
chronicle-history more in substance than in manner. 
Nowadays we make a sharp distinction between Plan- 
tagenets and the legendary sovereigns of prehistoric 
Britain. Holinshed makes little ; no Elizabethan au- 
dience would have made much ; and King Lear 
is translated straight from Holinshed to the Eliza- 
bethan stage. A playwright who should make a 
popular chronicle-history, however, was bound to 
translate his material into popular terms. In the 
case of King Lear, the rival quarto of 1605 and the 
emphasis on Shakspere's name in the two quartos of 
1608 go far to prove that, at least when new, Shaks- 
pere's chronicle-history of King Lear was popular. 
Clearly this must have been in spite of the undue 
compactness of style which gives us fresh evidence 
of Shakspere's abnormal mental activity. At first 
sight, too, this popularity would seem to have existed 
in spite of the essentially unactable quality of such 
scenes as that where the mad court sits. 



294 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Glance again, though, at the titlepage. Remember 
that on the titlepage of the quarto of Henry IV. 
Falstaff had as much room as the King ; and that on 
the titlepage of the quarto of Henri/ V. there was al- 
most as much space given to Ancient Pistol. Clearly 
enough, these were the brands of comic sauce which 
added relish to the serious portions of the older 
chronicle-histories. On the titlepage of King Lear 
we find the same prominence given to " Edgar, sonne 
and heire to the Earle of Glocester, and his sullen 
and assumed humour of Tom of Bedlam." Startling 
as the obvious conclusion may seem, it is unavoid- 
able : the character of Edgar, at least so far as his 
feigned madness went, was intended to be broadly 
comic. In this respect, too, it was not peculiar but 
conventional. To go no further, consider the comic 
scenes of Middleton's Changeling ; and that dance of 
madmen in Webster's Duchess of Malji, which nowa- 
days seems so inexplicable. Once for all, the ravings 
of actual madness were conventionally accepted as 
comic by an Elizabethan audience, just as drunken- 
ness is so accepted to-day. 

Grasp this fact, and you will find the strangest of 
transformations in King Lear himself. Shakspere 
never conceived a character with deeper sympathetic 
insight. Nowadays, that is what we think of, just 
as nowadays we think of Shylock's profound human 
nature. 1 To go no further than the scene of the mad 
court, however, Lear is shown to us as a raving mad- 
man, and as such still looks grotesque. When Shaks- 

1 See p. 151 seq. 



KING LEAR 295 

pere wrote, this grotesqueness, to-day so repellent, 
was a thing in which audiences were accustomed to 
delight. Only when we understand that King Lear, 
for all his marvellous pathos, was meant, in scene 
after scene, to impress an audience as comic, can 
we begin to understand the theatrical intention of 
Shakspere's tragedy. 

Conventionally comic in this aspect, the part of 
King Lear appealed also to another Elizabethan taste 
of which little trace remains. As any of the old 
tragedies of blood or chronicle-histories will show, 
Elizabethan audiences delighted in sonorous rant. If 
no traces of the older plays were left, Hamlet's ad- 
vice to the players x would suggest this, as well as 
the existence of a ripening taste which deprecated 
undue bombast. At the same time, this ripening 
taste, according to Ben Jonson, 2 had not prevailed even 
in 1614, when there were still men left to " sweare 
Jeronimo or Andronieus are the best playes." How 
to gratify this taste for rant without violating pro- 
priety, then, was a fine artistic problem. Shakspere 
solved it in the tremendously ranting speeches which 
fitly express the madness of Lear. At once ranting 
and grotesque, the madness of Lear, to-day so su- 
premely and solely tragic, was probably the trait which 
chiefly made the Elizabethan public relish this play. 

To dwell on these obsolete, archaic traits of King 
Lear has been doubly worth our while. They should 

1 Hamlet, III. ii. 

2 Induction to Bartholomew Fair. See p. 66. 



296 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

serve, in the first place, to remind us of what we have 
lately inclined to forget, — that, with all their lasting 
greatness, Shakspere's tragedies were made for con- 
ditions so remote from ours that any student who 
should neglect their history runs constant risk of mis- 
understanding. In the second place, more notably 
still, such obsolete Elizabethan traits as probably 
secured the early popularity of King Lear are traits 
which the author must deliberately have introduced. 
Without meaning to, an artist may imply endless 
truth ; when his art adapts his work to a popular 
demand, however, he can hardly be unaware of it. 

The traits which make King Lear permanently 
great, on the other hand, are very different from 
what we have considered. No popular audience could 
ever much have relished them. They are the traits 
of thought, of imagination, of diction alike, which are 
generally characteristic of Shakspere. Nowhere do 
they appear, on study, more distinctly. No play of 
Shakspere's more surely rewards elaborate considera- 
tion. A single example will suffice us, — the excel- 
lent reasons which Goneril and Regan have to justify 
what is commonly held to be their gross ingratitude. 

In the first place, these women have inherited from 
their father an impetuous, overbearing temper, of the 
kind which is especially sensitive to the exhibition of 
its own weaknesses by other people. Constitutionally, 
then, they would be specially liable to provocation by 
a man so like them as their father. In the second 
place, their elaborate professions of filial devotion are 



KING LEAR 297 

not essentially insincere; they are simply elaborate 
manifestations of such formal etiquette as still appears 
in the formulae of correspondence. Cordelia's sincerity 
is an excess of not too mannerly virtue; Goneril's and 
Regan's protestations of love are only what court 
manners conventionally require. Lear, quartered with 
Goneril, behaves outrageously, 1 and she is justifiably 
angry ; her anger manifests itself, characteristically, 
not by a direct outburst, but by orders, quite in 
accordance with court etiquette, that Lear and his 
rowdies be treated with abruptness. Just at this 
moment, Lear engages as a servant the disguised 
Earl of Kent, a very loyal, but a very hot-tempered 
nobleman. 2 When Goneril's steward is rude to Lear, 
Kent — believed to be an ordinary serving man — 
trips the steward up, thereby giving full color to 
the worst tales of Lear's rowdyism. Goneril there- 
upon, in fierce temper, remonstrates. Whereupon, 
amid the noisy chatter of his Fool, Lear, instead of 
listening to reason, proceeds to curse her, to rave, and 
to rush off to Regan. Naturally incensed, Goneril 
sends to Regan an unvarnished statement of what 
has occurred. Her messenger is the very steward 
whom Kent has thrashed. Kent meets him at Glos- 
ter's castle ; 3 and addresses him in a way which, 
while perhaps tolerable from a nobleman to a ser- 
vant, is quite intolerable between men of equal rank, 
which the disguise of Kent makes them appear. An- 
other quarrel ensues. Regan and her husband come 

i I. iii. 2 I. iv. 3 II. ii. 



298 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

on the scene, to receive from Kent, Lear's messenger, 
no more explanation of his violent behavior than that 
he does not like the countenance of Goneril's steward. 
Cornwall, Regan's husband, suggests that his own 
personal appearance, or Regan's, might perhaps be 
equally distasteful. To which Kent answers, 1 — 

' ' Sir, 't is my occupation to be plain : 
I have seen better faces in my time 
Than stands on any shoulder that I see 
Before me at this instant." 

Such conduct in a man whom nobody dreams to be 
anything but a common servant, merits the stocks. 
The worst stories of Goneril are confirmed, before 
Regan hears them, by this scandalous conduct of 
Lear's insolent follower. When Lear arrives, 2 Regan, 
once for all, will no more harbor rowdyism than will 
Goneril. Lear's behavior is in no way conciliatory. 
Finally, before he plunges off into the storm, both of 
his daughters have been worked up into such a rage 
that if they had acted as modern moralists command 
they would certainly have been too good for human 
nature. Given their temperaments, the conduct of 
Lear, and the misunderstanding involved in the clash 
between the character and the disguise of Kent, and 
nothing could be more humanly justifiable than their 
behavior. Yet so carefully is the intention of the 
plot preserved that to this day these passionate, hu- 
man women are considered to be what Lear and the 

1 Lines 98-101. 2 II. iv. 



KING LEAR 299 

audience were expected to find them, — monsters of 
ingratitude. 

To a student such not obvious but clearly discover- 
able traits as this, make any work of art fascinating ; 
and King Lear constantly rewards minute criticism. 
Some have made a pathologic study of Lear's madness ; 
others have delighted in aesthetic study of the means 
by which so painful a tragedy has been made to pro- 
duce an effect of lasting beauty. Any study of King 
Lear reaps rich results. The intensity, the concen- 
tration of the play makes many critics speak of it 
as Shakspere's masterpiece. 

This criticism is surely not final. Vastly though 
King Lear reward study, it surely demands study ; 
and a masterpiece should possess not only the com- 
plexity but also the simplicity of greatness. Sim- 
plicity King Lear lacks, from the constant intensity 
of its concentration. Almost every other trait of 
greatness, however, it possesses; among them the 
trait that, whether we understand it or not, it pro- 
duces an emotional effect peculiarly its own. The 
mood which underlies it is hard to phrase ; murky, 
one may call it, passionate, despairing, terrible, tran- 
sitory — and never be much nearer the truth than 
one began. 

In this mood, however, there is clearly irony. Men 
are the sport of fate, as surely as were Iago and Ham- 
let and Brutus. The irony of King Lear, however, 
differs from the irony we have known before ; it is 
accompanied by a rush of emotion which at first seems 



300 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

to overpower thought. What need of thought ? seems 
the impulse here: thought cannot help us any whither. 
To the winds with it ! Yet yield to emotion — as 
Lear yields — and fate is just as pitiless ; fate is even 
more horrible still, for that way lies madness. Clearly 
enough, in this conscious presentation of madness 
there is trace of the overwrought state of mind which 
revealed itself in the insane concentration of Iago, in 
the maniacal intellectual activity of Hamlet. 

Again, in the villainy of Goneril and of Regan, in 
the story of Edmund, in the bitter obscenities of Lear's 
ravings and of the Fool, we have fresh evidence of the 
sexual mystery so constantly touched on in Othello, 
in Troilus and Cressida, in Measure for Measure, in 
Hamlet, in AIVs Well that Ends Well, and in the 
Sonnets. 

Throughout King Lear, too, passionate emotion 
sweeps on with a surge hitherto unfelt. It tran- 
scends all human power. It must needs be set in 
the most passionate of natural backgrounds, — the 
fiercest of actual tempests. Such critics as might 
feel beneath the mood of Hamlet a lurking musical 
cadence could find no hidden music here, but rather 
would dream of the roll of thunder in the night. 

In King Lear, however, there is something even 
more profound than this storm of passion. Othello 
contained wonderful touches of concentrated pathos ; 
every one must find them, for example, in the last 
hours of Desdemona. 1 In King Lear one feels pathos 

i Othello, IV. iii. 



KING LEAH 301 

throughout. Fate-ridden, passionate man is pitiful, 
pitiful. Finally comes a deeper emotion still. The 
storm lulls ; death reveals itself, no longer a mys- 
tery, but a despairing solution of the problem of human 
agony. Such timid dreams as Hamlet's and Clau- 
dio's have no place in such misery as Lear's. There 
is no need to vex ourselves with fancies of what may 
lie beyond. No world, no life could be more evil than 
this of ours. Kent's farewell to the old King 1 speaks 
the final word of King Lear: — 

"Vex not his ghost : 0, let him pass ! he hates him 
That would upon the rack of this tough world 
Stretch him out longer." 

This overpowering mood which underlies King Lear 
seems, like the mood of Hamlet, emotionally sincere 
— self-revealing— to a degree unusual with Shakspere. 
To know such a mood, one grows to believe, he must 
have penetrated, really or sympathetically, deeper than 
we have yet guessed into the depths of spiritual suf- 
fering. For whoever wrote King Lear must have 
been intellectually alert to the verge of madness ; 
passionately sensitive the while to all the misery 
he perceived ; ironical yet pitiful ; kept within the 
bounds of sanity mostly by the blessed accident that 
he had mastered and controlled a great art of ex- 
pression ; and yet despite his art, able to find no bet- 
ter comfort for all this misery than the certainty that, 
at all events as we know life, life mercifully ends. 



302 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 



IX. Macbeth. 

[The first record of Macbeth is in the note-book of one Dr. Simon 
Forinan, who saw it at the Globe on April 20th, 1610. His note 
which is too long for quotation here, begins thus " There was to be 
observed, first how Macbeth and Banquo, two noblemen of Scotland, 
riding through a wood, there stood before them three women Fairies, 
or Nymphs, and saluted Macbeth, saying three times unto him, Hail, 
King of Coder, for thou shalt be a King, but shalt beget no Kings, 
etc." No other indubitable mention of Macbeth has been discovered 
until its entry in 1623, and its publication in the folio. 

Its source, like that of King Lear and the chronicle-histories, is 
Holinshed. There seems to have been an earlier plaj' on the subject. 

Macbeth, in its present condition, is evidently incomplete, — either an 
unfinished sketch, or an abridgment of a finished play. There has 
been much discussion as to whether much of the witch-scenes was 
not probably added by Middleton. On various internal grounds, how- 
ever, including the fact that so-called light and weak endings to lines 
here first appear to any considerable degree, Macbeth has generally 
been assigned to about 1606.] 

At a glance one can see that Macbeth differs 
conspicuously from any other play of Shakspere's. 
It is comparatively very short, 1 very monotonous, 
and very firm. There is hardly any underplot, hardly 
any comic matter. One scene, to he sure, — that of 
the bleeding sergeant, 2 — is so archaic as to suggest 
that it may possibly be a fragment of some older play ; 

1 In the Globe Shakespeare it occupies 22 pages, while Hamlet 
occupies 35, and King Lear and Othello each occupy about 32. The 
Leopold Shakspere, p. cxxiii., gives Hamlet 3931 lines, King Lear 
3332, Othello 3317, and Macbeth 2108. 

2 I. ii. 



MACBETH 303 

another, — that where Macduff and Ross meet Malcolm 
in England, 1 — while taken straight from Holinshed, 
is so highly finished as to suggest either that it is the 
single remaining fragment of a more elaborate play 
than now remains, or else that it was either written in 
a momentary lapse of mood, or inserted later, when 
the emotional impulse which pervades Macbeth had 
subsided. Apart from these scenes, hardly anything 
but the Witches and the Porter interrupts the swift, 
steady progress of the action. 

Similar concentration of purpose we found in Othello. 
While every detail of Othello, however, is developed 
with masterly care, Macbeth is only blocked out with 
masterly firmness of hand ; it is nowhere elaborated. 
Not long ago, an Elizabethan play — the Maid's Trag- 
edy, of Beaumont and Fletcher — was adapted for a 
private performance by the simple process of striking 
out the underplot, and whatever else did not concern 
the principal story. The result was a short, admi- 
rably dramatic play, remarkable for swift firmness of 
action and development, but somehow — while essen- 
tially complete — subtly unfinished. In other words, 
after due allowance for the difference between Shaks- 
pere and Beaumont and Fletcher, the effect produced 
by thus isolating the main plot of the Maid's Tragedy 
was closely analogous to the effect of Macbeth. 

Macbeth, in short, is just what we should expect 
from a collaborator who had agreed to furnish the 
serious part of a chronicle-history, or a tragedy, to be 
1 IV. iii. 



304 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

completed by comic scenes from somebody else. Bet- 
ter still, perhaps, it is what we should expect from 
an Elizabethan playwright who, carried away by one 
aspect of his subject, had finished one part independ- 
ently, leaving the rest for some future moment which 
never came. Equally, of course, it is what you may 
make of any complete Elizabethan tragedy by cutting 
out everything but the main action. If it were ever 
finished, this is probably what has happened to it ; if 
not, the play gives two or three indications of why 
further finish may have seemed needless. One of 
these is its dramatic effectiveness ; it still acts admi- 
rably. Another is that, while too long to admit a 
fully developed underplot within the limits of a single 
performance, it is too compact to be abridged without 
injury. 

As to whether Macbethhe a sketch or an abridgment 
there is no direct evidence. Mr. Fleay 1 and many 
other competent critics believe it an abridgment. The 
analogies between the witch-scenes and Middleton's 
Witch 2 might be held to point the other way. Con- 
ceivably they might indicate that the witch-scenes in 
the original play were so slight as to need augmenta- 
tion ; if so, there would be a little reason to believe 
Macbeth not an abridgment but a sketch. The gen- 
eral effect of the style, too, points slightly towards the 
same conclusion ; throughout the play there is such 

1 Life, 238-242. 

2 Discussed in Furness, Variorum Shakespeare : Macbeth, pp. 388- 
405. 



MACBETH 305 

swift precision of touch as one would expect in a 
hasty, consecutive piece of master-work. What Mac- 
beth lacks, too, apart from comic passages and under- 
plot, is chiefly that elaboration of minor characters 
and of subtle phrase which careful finish would supply, 
and which a sketch would probably lack. 

To say that Macbeth lacks anything, however, seems 
stupid ; it lacks nothing essential ; in total effect no 
play could be more definitely complete. Until one 
count the lines, indeed, it is hard to realize how few 
the strokes are by which this effect is produced. 
Elaboration could add nothing but detail and occa- 
sional relief. 

In certain moods, one may fairly feel that Macbeth 
needs relief. Its temper is certainly monotonous, with 
a terrible monotony of despair. Macbeth himself is 
a wonderful study of fate-ridden, irresponsible, yet 
damning crime. Meaningless in one aspect such a 
figure seems ; yet its appalling, unmeaning mystery 
is everlastingly true. This view of human nature is 
again like that formulated by Calvinism. 1 Forced to 
sin by an incarnate power beyond himself, man, eter- 
nally unregencrate, is nevertheless held to account for 
every act of a will perverted by the sin and the curse 
of ancestral humanity. He is the sport of external 
powers ; and so far as these powers deal with him 
they are all evil, malicious, wreaking ill without end. 
Life, then, is a horrible mystery ; it is a " fitful fever," 2 
after which perhaps the chosen few may sleep well ; it 

1 See pp. 269, 273. 2 III. ii. 23. 



306 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

is " a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signi- 
fying nothing." 1 Consciousness, indeed, is a delirium, 
a raving imbecility ; yet when the end comes he who 
first cries " Hold, enough ! " 2 is damned for the deeds 
of his delirious raving. The hackneyed rhyme of 
Macbeth's last speech makes us forget, for an instant, 
the full horror of its triumphantly Calvinistic mean- 
ing. As we ponder, the horror grows ; there are 
moods in which we cry out a protest. 

In other moods, more subtly aesthetic, we may find 
in Macbeth as it stands all the relief we need. Its 
amazing precision of style is so stimulating that one 
may constantly delight in the lines, quite apart from 
their significance. 3 In King Lear, as we saw, a tre- 
mendous access of thought deprives the style of sim- 
plicity. In Macbeth the superficial simplicity of style 
is remarkable ; one is rarely puzzled by overpacked 
meaning. Somehow, though, for all its superhuman 
power, the style of Macbeth has not the final quality 
which marks the difference between a masterly sketch 
and a finished work of art. Yet no one would alter it. 

Quite apart from style, too, the ultimate truth to 
life of both characters and situations throughout gives 
one a pleasure which goes far to obviate the horror 
of the motive. This truth to life is nowhere more 
remarkable than in the supernatural passages. Fan- 
tastically weird as these seem, they actually fall in 
with some of the results approached by modern inves- 

1 V. v. 26. 2 V. viii. 34. 

8 A random example will illustrate this: e. g. II. ii. 9-21. 



MACBETH 307 

tigators who are scientifically observing occult phe- 
nomena. The Witches stand for such introducers to 
the hidden realms as in our unromantic world are 
called mediums. Macbeth's fancy once enthralled by 
these, he becomes something of a medium himself : 
he sees a phantom dagger, he hears warning voices, he 
is visited by the spectre of Banquo, he witnesses the 
mysteries of the Witches' cavern. Meanwhile, from 
beginning to end, he is undergoing that subtle, intan- 
gible, inevitable process of intellectual and moral deg- 
radation which is bound to ruin whoever, without 
holiest motive, ventures into occult mysteries. 1 The 
truth of these supernatural scenes, indeed, seems to 
indicate that Shakspere's knowledge of occult phe- 
nomena was growing. In Richard III., his ghosts 
were mere nursery goblins ; in Julius Ccesar, the spirit 
of the murdered Caesar had become a sort of incarnate 
fate ; in Hamlet, the ghost was the individual disem- 
bodied spirit of tradition ; in Macbeth, the dagger, the 
weird voices, and the ghastly shape of Banquo are such 
visions, or delusions, as throughout human history 
constantly occur to unhappy men. 

In connection with this matter, a note by Mr. 
Greene is suggestive : — 

" Semi-insanity begins to seem almost subjective in 
Shakspere, especially in this case where it takes an aspect 
not uncommon in literary men. The beings whom they 
create first begin to act independently of the writer's 

1 Cf. a paper on the Salem Witches, in Slelligeri and Other Essays 
Concerning America. 



308 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

volition, then to appear as hallucinations unsummoned. 
Very likely this happened to Shakspere not merely when 
he dreamt, hut when he was awake; and this is just what 
happens to Macbeth : First he sees a dagger which he 
recognizes as unreal hut cannot dismiss. Then a voice 
says to him < Sleep no more.' Finally he thinks the 
ghost real whom only he sees. Perhaps this is complete 
insanity; hut probably Shakspere did not think so." 

The means by which the characters of Macbeth 
and his Lady are expressed, indeed, would suggest 
doubt as to whether Shakspere could have deliberately 
thought of them at all, except as concepts which he 
was bound to embody in phrase. The amazing com- 
pactness of their lines surprises whoever counts the 
words. In the first act, where both of these great 
psychological conceptions are thoroughly set forth, 
Lady Macbeth has fourteen speeches, comprising 864 
words, and Macbeth has twentj^-six speeches, compris- 
ing 878 words. In all, the speeches of Lady Macbeth 
number less than 60, many of them very short ; and 
those of Macbeth, some of them equally short, num- 
ber less than 150. The art with which in so little 
space Shakspere has created and defined two of the 
most vital characters of all literature is a matter for 
constant admiration. 

So constant is one's admiration for Macbeth that 
one is apt to forget the archaism which really pervades 
all the work of Shakspere. In this case, Dr. Forman's 
note of the play should bring us to ourselves. On 
April 20, 1610, " there was to be observed," he writes, 



MACBETH 309 

" how Macbeth and Banquo, two noblemen of Scot- 
land, riding through a wood, there stood before them 
three women, etc." The fact that these personages 
were riding through a wood was presented to the eyes 
of Dr. Forman by the stage arrangements of the Globe 
Theatre. The methods by which it was probably 
presented would now seem incredible. Instead of a 
painted scene illuminated by green foot-lights, the 
wood probably consisted either of one or two Christ- 
mas trees, lugged in by attendants, or else of a placard 
posted at the back of the stage, at the sides of which 
Dr. Forman and his friends would sit, chatting and 
eating fruit, in plain sight of the audience. As to the 
riding, Macbeth and Banquo probably made their 
first entry with wicker-work hobby-horses about their 
waists, with false human legs, of half the natural 
length, dangling from the saddles, and with sweeping- 
skirts to hide the actors' feet. Monstrous as such a 
proceeding seems, it might still occur in serious trag- 
edy on the Chinese stage ; and the Chinese stage is 
very like the Elizabethan. A fact in Macbeth which 
slightly tends to prove this conjecture is that just 
before Banquo is killed he dismisses his horses behind 
the scenes, 1 and enters on foot. To die with a hobby- 
horse about one's waist would have been too much for 
even Elizabethan conventions. 

The peculiar effect of Macbeth, then, we have traced 
to the facts that while its stage conventions are ulti- 
mately archaic and its general treatment is remarkably 

1 III. iii. 8-14. 



310 WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE 

sketchy, its conception and style are profoundly true 
to human nature. In a subtle way, too, Macbeth, as 
one grows to know it, impresses one like Othello as 
strongly objective. The moods which underlie Hamlet 
and King Lear seem moods of which the poet might 
sometimes have been conscious as his own. The 
moods of Othello and Macbeth seem rather moods 
which the poet, if conscious of them at all, would 
probably have thought that he was inventing by sheer 
force of sympathetic imagination. 

As we have seen before, however, even work which 
is not primarily self-revealing can never express any- 
thing but what in some form or other its maker has 
known. 1 Macbeth, accordingly, once more displays 
the traits which pervade the other tragedies. To be- 
gin with, as Mr. Greene's note suggested, it shows 
fresh traces of an overwrought state of mind. The 
restless activity of Hamlet, the concentration of Iago, 
the passion of Othello, the raving of Lear, the ghost- 
seeing of Macbeth, the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth, 
all show the same morbid tendency. It is not for a 
moment to be guessed that Shakspere was insane ; 
his constant judgment, his artistic sanity were enough 
to preserve him from any such fate. Beyond reason- 
able doubt, however, his mind was at this period 
abnormally active ; and, perhaps in consequence, his 
imagination centred on morbid mental conditions. 
Again, in Macbeth, woman plays the devil's part. Com- 
pare the second series of the Sonnets, the relation of 

1 See p. 229. 



MACBETH 311 

the Queen and Ophelia in Hamlet to the men whom 
they half-innocently destroy, the wantonness of Cres- 
sida. the effect on Othello of the self-destructive gentle- 
ness of Desdemona, the cruelty and lust of Goneril and 
Regan, the active mischief of the Witches and of Lady 
Macbeth. All alike reveal a mind keenly alive to 
the manifold harm, wittingly or unwittingly, done by 
women. Finally, in Macbeth, the mood which we 
have called Calvinistic expresses, with unprecedented 
abandonment to artistic passion, an ultimately ironical 
view of human life. At least to human beings, life is 
an unrelieved misery — a tale told by an idiot, full of 
sound and fury, signifying nothing. Taken for all 
in all, Macbeth reveals deeper knowledge of spiritual 
misery than we have fathomed before. 

To appreciate this, we may best glance back at the 
four serious tragedies which have preceded. In each 
there are a few lines broadly suggestive of the tem- 
per which pervades it. Take Juliet's last speech to 
her nurse : l — 

" Farewell ! God knows when we shall meet again ; " 

or Romeo's final words : 2 — 

" Here 's to my love ! true apothecary ! 
Thy drugs are quick. Thus, with a kiss I die." 

Somehow these lines recall the sentimental pathos of 
Romeo and Juliet, that romantic poem which beside 
the great tragedies seems hardly tragic at all. 

1 Romeo and Juliet, IV. iii. 14. 2 Ibid. V. iii. 119. 



312 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Take Hamlet's dying speech to Horatio : 1 — 

" If thou didst ever hold me in thine heart, 
Absent thee from felicity awhile, 
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, 
To tell my story ; " 

and Horatio's farewell words : 2 — 

" Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince, 
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest !" 

These words somehow imply the mood of one who 
should dream of death as after all an end to the 
bewilderment of human existence. 

Take Othello's savagely conscious death-cry : 3 — 

" Set you down this ; 
And say besides, that in Aleppo once, 
Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk 
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, 
I took by the throat the circumcised dog, 
And smote him, thus ! " 

Somehow death comes as a splendid climax of passion. 
In Othello, as in Hamlet, life is a mystery ; death is a 
mystery, too ; but there maybe dreams of compensation. 
Then take Kent's speech of farewell to the dying 
Lear : 4 — 

" Vex not his ghost: 0, let him pass ! he hates him 
That would upon the rack of this tough world 
Stretch him out longer." 

Life here is unmixed agony. Only in death can there 
be even a dream of peace. 

1 Hamlet, V. ii. 357. z Ibid. 370. 

3 Othello, V. ii. 351. * King Lear, V. iii. 313. 



ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA 313 

Then take the words we have already cited from 
Macbeth : — 

" Duncan is in bis grave ; 
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well." 1 

" Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
Tbat struts and frets bis bour upon tbe stage 
And tben is beard no more : it is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing." 2 

Finally, take Macbeth's last shout : 3 — 

" Lay on, Macduff, 
And damn'd be be that first cries ' Hold, enough! ' " 

One feels in Macbeth the climax of all, — a knowledge 
of the last word of soul- sick despair. 



X. Antony and Cleopatra. 

[Antony and Cleopatra was entered in the Stationers' Register on 
May 20th, 1608. It was not published until the folio of 1623. 
Its source is North's Plutarch. 
On internal evidence, it is generally assigned coujecturally to 1607.] 

Composed throughout according to the conven- 
tions of chronicle-history, Antony and Cleopatra is at 
first sight bewildering. Whoever would appreciate it 
must deliberately revive the mood of an Elizabethan 
public, abandon himself to this mood, accept as normal 
what is really archaic. The effort is worth all the 

l III. ii, 22. 2 V. v. 24. 3 V. vii. 33. 



314 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

pains it may cost ; for while very close to its narra- 
tive source, Antony and Cleopatra displays at once 
masterly discretion in the selection of dramatic mate- 
rial, masterly power of creating both character and 
atmosphere, and unsurpassed mastery of language. 
The old conventions once accepted, indeed, the play 
may without extravagance be called the masterpiece 
of the kind of literature which began with Henry IV., 
— of historical fiction. 

To appreciate its full power, we may best compare 
passages from it with other treatments of the same 
or similar subjects. As a matter of mere description, 
for example, take the account in North's Plutarch of 
how Antony first sees Cleopatra, and compare with it 
the version of the story in Dry den's All for Love, and 
finally Shakspere's. 

Here is North's version : * — 

" She disdained to set forward otherwise, but to take her 
barge in the river of Cydnus; the poop whereof was of gold, 
the sails of purple, and the oars of silver, which kept 
stroke in rowing after the sound of the music of flutes, 
howboys, cithernes, viols, and such- other instruments as 
they played upon in the barge. And now for the person 
of her self, she was laid under a pavilion of cloth of gold of 
tissue, apparelled and attired like the goddess Venus, com- 
monly drawn in picture : and hard by her, on either hand 
of her, pretty fair boys apparelled as painters do set forth 
god Cupid, with little fans in their hands, with the which 
they fanned wind upon her. Her ladies and gentlewomen 
also, the fairest of them, were apparelled like the nynrphs 
1 Rolfe : Antony and Cleopatra, 151. 



ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA 315 

Nereids (which are the mermaids of the waters) and like 
the Graces; some steering the helm, others tending the 
tackle and ropes of the barge, out of the which there came 
a wonderful passing sweet savour of perfumes, that per- 
fumed the wharf's side, pestered with innumerable multi- 
tudes of people." 

Dryden's All for Love, published in 1078, as a 
matter of avowed rivalry with Shakspere, puts this 
passage into the mouth of Antony, who rehearses it 
to Dolabella, 1 as follows : — 

" Her galley down the silver Cydnos rowed, 
The tackling silk, the streamers waved with gold; 
The gentle winds were lodged in purple sails : 
Her nymphs, like Nereids, round her couch were placed ; 
Where she, another sea-born Venus, lay. 



She lay, and leant her cheek upon her hand ; 

And cast a look so languishingly sweet, 

As if, secure of all beholders' hearts, 

Neglecting, she could take them : boys, like Cupids, 

Stood fanning, with their painted wings, the winds 

That played about her face : but if she smiled, 

A darting glory seemed to blaze abroad, 

That men's desiring eyes were never w 7 earied, 

But hung upon the object : to soft flutes 

The silver oars kept time ; and while they played, 

The hearing gave new pleasure to the sight ; 

And both to thought. 'T was heaven or somewhat more ; 

For she so charmed all hearts, that gazing crowds 

Stood panting on the shore, and wanted breath 

To give their welcome voice." 

Compare with these the version which Shakspere 
puts into the mouth of cool, shrewd Enobarbus : 2 — 

i III. i. 2 II. ii. 196-223. 



316 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, 

Burned on the water : the poop was beaten gold ; 

Purple the sails, and so perfumed that 

The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, 

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made 

The water which they beat to follow faster, 

As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, 

It beggar'd all description : she did lie 

In her pavilion — cloth-of-gold of tissue — 

O'erpicturing that Venus where we see 

The fancy outwork nature : on each side her 

Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, 

With divers-coloured fans, whose wind did seem 

To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, 

And what they undid did. .... 

Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, 

So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes, 

And made their bends adornings : at the helm 

A seeming mermaid steers : the silken tackle 

Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands 

That yarely frame the office. From the barge 

A strange invisible perfume hits the sense 

Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast 

Her people out upon her; and Antony, 

Enthron'd i' the market-place, did sit alone, 

Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy, 

Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,- 

And made a gap in nature." 

At once far closer to the original than Dryden, and 
less ingeniously laborious in his variations, Shakspere 
is at the same time more poetic and more plausible. 

Now for the character of Cleopatra. In All for 
Love, Dryden brings her face to face with Oetavia, 1 
and here is what passes: — 
i III. i. 



ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA 317 

" Octav. I need not ask if you are Cleopatra ; 
Your haughty carriage — 

Cleo. Shows I am a queen: 

Nor need I ask you, who you are. 

Octav. A Roman ; 

A name that makes and can unmake a queen. 

Cleo. Your lord, the man who serves me, is a Roman. 

Octav. He was a Roman, till he lost that name, 
To be a slave in Egypt; but I come 
To free him thence. 

Cleo. Peace, peace, my lover's Juno. 

When he grew weary of that household clog, 
He chose my easier bonds." 

Admirably theatrical though that dialogue be, com- 
pare it with the passage from Shakspere, where Cleo- 
patra believes that Antony has received a stirring 
message from his wife : 1 

" Cleo. I am sick and sullen. 

Ant. I am sorry to give breathing to my purpose, — 

Cleo. Help me away, dear Charmian; I shall fall: 
It cannot be thus long, the sides of nature 
Will not sustain it. 

Ant. Now, my dearest queen, — 

Cleo. Pray you, stand farther from me. 

Ant. What's the matter ? 

Cleo. I know, by that same eye, there 's some good news. 
What says the married woman \ " etc. 

Just as theatrical, and far more colloquial, Shak- 
spere's scene seems comparatively like a fragment of 
real life. So any treatment of Cleopatra by Shak- 
spere seems when we put it beside any of Corneille's, 
— as, for example, when she declares to Caesar: 2 

1 I. iii. 13. 2 Corneille, Pompe'e, IV. iii. 



318 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

" Je scais ce que je dois au souverain bonheur 
Dont ine comble et m'accable un tel exces d'honneur. 
Je ne vous tiendray plus mes passions secrettes ; 
Je scais ce que je suis, je scais ce que vous etes; 
Vous daignastes m'aimer des mes plus jeunes ans ; 
Le sceptre que je porte est un de vos presens; 
Vous m'avez par deux fois rendu le diademe: 
J'avoue apres cela, Seigneur, que je vous aime," etc. 

John Fletcher, too, treated the loves of Cleopatra 
and Julius Caesar ; and here is how he made her 
coquet with the great Roman : 1 

" Cleo. (giving a jewel) . Take this, 
And carry it to that lordly Caesar sent thee ; 
There's a new love, a handsome one, a rich one, 
One that will hug his mind : bid him make love to it ; 
Tell the ambitious broker, this will suffer — 

Apol. He enters. 

Enter Caesar. 

Cleo. How! 

Gees. I do not use to wait, lady; 

Where I am, all the doors are free and open. 

Cleo. I guess so by your rudeness; " 

And so on. 

The very end of Antony and Cleopatra, however, is 
perhaps more typical than any other passage. Here 
is North's version of Cleopatra's death : 2 — 

" When they had opened the doors, they found Cleo- 
patra stark-dead, laid upon a bed of gold, attired and 
arrayed in her royal robes, and one of her two women, 
which was called Iras, dead at her feet: and the other 
woman (called Charmion) half dead, and trembling, trim- 
ming the diadem which Cleopatra wore upon her head, 
i The False One, IV. ii. 2 Rolfe, 167. 



ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA 319 

One of the soldiers seeing her, angrily said unto her: ' Is 
that well done, Charmion ? ' 'Very well,' she said again, 
'and meet for a princess descended from the race of so 
many noble kings: ' she said no more, but fell down dead 
hard by the bed." 

In All for Love, Dryden makes Cleopatra greet the 
asp thus : 

" Welcome, thou kind deceiver! 
Thou best of thieves ; who with an easy key 
Dost open life, and, unperceived by us, 
Even steal us from ourselves," and so on. 

The guard at that moment clamor for admission ; 
whereupon, in the presence of both Iras and Char- 
mian, Cleopatra thus applies the asp : 

'-' Haste, bare my arm, and rouse the serpent's fury. 
Coward flesh, 

Wouldst thou conspire with Caesar to betray me 
As thou wert none of mine 1 I '11 force thee to it, 
And not be sent by him, 
But bring myself, my soul, to Antony. 
Take hence; the work is done.'' 

The women then apply asps to themselves. Iras in- 
stantly dies. The guard break in, and one exclaims : 

" 'T was what I feared, — 
Charmion, is this well done 1 

Char. Yes, 't is well done, and like a queen, the last 
Of her great race: I follow her. [Dies.]" 

In Antony and Cleopatra, Iras dies before Cleo- 
patra applies the asp. Then come these marvellous 
speeches: 1 

1 V. ii. 303 seq. 



320 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

" Cleo. This proves me base ; 

If she first meet the curled Antony, 
He '11 make demand of her, and spend that kiss 
Which is my heaven to have. Come, thou mortal wretch, 
With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate 
Of life at once untie: poor venomous fool, 
Be angry, and dispatch. O, could st thou speak, 
That I might hear thee call great Csesar ass 
Unpolicied ! 

Char. O eastern star 1 

Cleo. Peace, peace ! 

Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, 
That sucks the nurse asleep ? " 

Finally, when the queen is dead, and the guard break 
in, a soldier speaks : — 

" What work is here ! Charmian, is this well done ? 
Char. It is well clone, and fitting for a princess 
Descended of so many royal kings. 
Ah, soldier 1 [Dies.] " 

This prolonged quotation was probably the shortest 
as well as the most definite means of showing how, 
amid a considerable group of skilful historical fictions, 
Shakspere's Antony and Cleopatra emerges as a mas- 
terpiece of history. While the other treatments of 
Cleopatra are theatrically effective, Shakspere's not 
only creates a miraculously human woman, but actu- 
ally revives the death throes of the ancient world. 
Of course Antony and Cleopatra is a great poem. 
For all its light and weak endings, all the grow- 
ing freedom of style which marks the beginning of 
metrical decay, its phrasing throughout is far above 



ANTONY AND CLEOPATKA 321 

the indignity of actual life. No human being, for ex- 
ample, would ever have uttered many of the phrases 
we have considered already ; nor yet such words as 
the more famous ones with which the play teems : 

" Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale 
Her infinite variety; " * 

" She looks like sleep, 
As she would catch another Antony 
In her strong toil of grace ; " 2 

and more. All its veracity of detail does not make 
Antony and Cleopatra realistic in style. The differ- 
ence between this great poem, however, and the most 
literally phrased of modern histories is only a differ- 
ence of method. Essentially each brings us face to 
face with an actual historic past ; each leaves us in a 
mood which we might have felt, had we known that 
past in the flesh. 

In the flesh whoever knew it must have known it 
best. The life here brought back from the dust was 
nowise spiritual. The world which Antony and Cleo- 
patra revives was dying. What had made Rome 
Roman, Greece Greek, Egypt Egyptian, was passing. 
Ruin was everywhere impending, not instant, but none 
the less fatal. The old ideals were gone ; nor was 
there yet any gleam of the new ideals to come. This 
falling world, though, once great and noble, retained 
even in its fall the aspect of its past grandeur ; and 
like all great moments of decadence it afforded to 
whoever would plunge into its vortex such splendor of 

1 II. ii. 240. 2 V. ii. 349. 

21 



322 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

sensuous, earthly delight that in certain moods one 
still envies the animal ecstasies of those who fell, dis- 
daining all nobler sense. Nor is such sympathy with 
the intoxication of evil a thing in which even the 
purest of heart need feel shame. No one can know 
the real grandeur of moral conquest who does not also 
realize the alluring delights of moral degradation over 
which such conquest must triumph. 

We wander from Shakespere, however. Such mat- 
ters as we have just touched on are not specifically set 
forth in Antony and Cleopatra. What Shakspere there 
does, as we have seen, is simply to present the facts of 
Plutarch's narrative in a grandly objective way. In 
these facts themselves were inherent all this sympa- 
thetic knowledge of fleshly delight, and all these 
splendid gleams of what made noble classic antiquity. 
In the facts, too, was inherent the great solemnity 
of world ruin. All this the very facts make us 
feel. Nowhere in literature is the atmosphere of 
an historic past more marvellously or more faithfully 
revived. 

In this atmosphere live men and women whose in- 
dividuality, like that of men and women in the flesh, 
while complete, is not instantly salient. What one 
first feels in Antony and Cleopatra is the world- 
movement which whirls all these people on, the local 
and temporal atmosphere which enshrouds them. By 
and by, however, as one grows to know them better, 
each personage begins to stand out as distinct as any 
living individual whom one grows really to know. 



ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA 323 

Take, for example, the scene on Pompey's galley. 1 In 
Plutarch there is the merest hint for this scene : 2 

" So he cast anchors enow into the sea, to make his galley 
fast, from the head of Mount Misena: and there he wel- 
comed them, and made them great cheer. Now in the 
midst of the feast, when they fell to be merry with Anto- 
nius' love unto Cleopatra, Menas the pirate came to Pom- 
pey, and whispering in his ear, said unto him : l Shall I 
cut the cables of the anchors, and make thee lord not only 
of Sicily and Sardinia, but of the whole empire of Rome 
besides ? ; Pompey, having paused awhile upon it, at 
length answered him: ' Thou shouldest have done it, and 
never have told it me ; but now we must content us with 
that we have ; as for myself, I was never taught to break 
my faith, nor to be counted a traitor ! ' " 

From this plain statement of fact Shakspere devel- 
oped one of the most consummately dramatic scenes in 
literature. The triple head of imperial Rome is drunk, 
each in his own way : Antony boisterous, Octavius 
gravely silent, Lepidus silly. All are utterly in the 
power of an unscrupulous enemy ; all are saved from 
a fate which might have altered the course of history 
by the single surviving scruple of a man who usually 
had none. Then the drunken Lepidus is bundled over 
the side ; and the empire is safe. This whole story is 
told in seventy-five lines, which not only set forth the 
intensely dramatic situation, but preserve meanwhile a 
constant sense of how funny men are when the worse 
for drink. Every syllable of this astonishing scene 
has a specific office. 

1 II. vii. 2 Rolfe, 154. 



324 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

This scene, then, clearly displays the trait which 
distinguishes Antony and Cleopatra from the plays 
which precede. As we have already seen again and 
again, Shakspere's power of creating individual char- 
acter, and thereby of creating an atmosphere, re- 
mains unsurpassed. The tremendous activity of mind 
which has been palpable from Hamlet onward re- 
mains constant, too ; every syllable is packed with 
meaning. On the other hand, however, the profound 
emotional impulse which has surged beneath the 
great tragedies seems here to slacken. Antony and 
Cleopatra has passion enough and to spare ; but it is 
passion presented in a coolly dramatic, dispassionate 
way. The effect is perhaps of more supreme mastery 
than any we have met before. More than before, how- 
ever, the sense that this is mastery obtrudes itself. 
What makes Antony and Cleopatra so peculiarly great, 
indeed, is probably a slight relaxation of that intense 
artistic impulse which made so great in a different way 
Hamlet, and Othello, and King Lear, and Macbeth. 

Creative power, however, even though it lack a little 
of the spontaneous intensity which one felt in Hamlet, 
in Iago, in Lear, in Macbeth, is as great as ever. To 
pass from the lesser characters, each of whom is 
thoroughly individual, there are in all literature no 
two personages more consummately alive than Antony 
and Cleopatra themselves. So living do they seem, 
indeed, that to analyze them is as grave a task as to 
analyze real human beings. Each is not only true to 
fact, but more. Antony is not only the Antony, and 



AXTOXY AND CLEOPATRA 325 

Cleopatra the Cleopatra of recorded history ; each 
broadly typifies eternal phases of human nature. 
Antony is the lasting type of that profound infatua- 
tion which is the most insidious snare of passionate 
middle-life ; Cleopatra is the supreme type of all that 
in womanhood is fatal. 

In this view of woman as fatal to man, whoever has 
pursued our course of study must find the culmination 
of a series of moods concerning sexual relations, for 
whose origin we must look far back. From the Rosa- 
line of Love's Labour 's Lost through Portia to Bea- 
trice, and Rosalind, and Yiola, we had a series of 
figures which expressed the mood of innocent, adoring 
fascination. In All 's Well that Ends Well, in Hamlet, 
in Measure for Measure, we had expressions, in vary- 
ing terms, of the troubles which spring from such be- 
ginnings, when without relaxing its hold fascination is 
invaded by doubt. In Trollus and Cressida and in 
Othello we had doubt more definitely and more passion- 
ately stated, with all its bewildering uncertainty. In 
King Lear we had cruelty incarnate in woman ; in 
Macbeth woman embodied all the evil influences and 
the evil counsel which may ruin man. Here in Cleo- 
patra we have the whole story summed up, in a mas- 
terly psychologic recapitulation, which reminds one of 
the masterly dramatic recapitulation so characteristic 
of Shakspere, and most evident in Twelfth Night. It 
is idle to deny, too, that the moods thus recapitulated 
are very like what we may believe to underlie the 
second series of Sonnets. 



326 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

The unanswerable question which that last sugges- 
tion raises, however, — as to whether Beatrice and 
Cleopatra be different portraits of the same living 
woman who inspired the Sonnets, — is impertinent. 
The Shakspere with whom we may legitimately deal 
is not the man, who has left no record of his actual 
life, but the artist, who has left the fullest record of 
his emotional experience. To search for the actual 
man is at once unbecoming and futile. What we can 
fairly assert of this great Antony and Cleopatra is 
enough for our purpose : If we once accept the con- 
ventions of chronicle-history, this play reveals an artist, 
objective in temper and consummate master of his art, 
who has told a historic story with supreme artistic 
truth ; and the story, impregnated at once with the 
sense of irony which we have learned to know and with 
a more profound sense than ever of the evil which wo- 
man may wreak, is a story which supremely, dispas- 
sionately expresses the tragedy of world-decadence. 

XI. Coriolanus. 

[Coriolanus was first entered in 1623 and published in the folio. No 
earlier allusion to it is known. 

Its source, like that of Antony and Cleopatra, is North's Plutarch. 

Verse-tests 1 place it near Antony and Cleopatra. For examples of 
" light " endings, see II. i. 238, 241, 243, 245 ; for " weak " endings, see 
V. vi. 75, 76. The number of weak endings iu Coriolanus is exceeded 
only in Cymbeline. Shakspere's verse is clearly breaking down. On 
this ground chiefly, common conjecture now assigns Coriolanus to 
about 1608.] 

1 See Dowden's Primer, 39-44, and Mr. Ingram's paper in the New 
Shakspere Society's Transactions for 1874, p. 442. 



CORIOLANUS 327 

Like Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Ca-sar, 
Coriolanus at first appears to be a chronicle-history 
based on Plutarch instead of on Holinshed, not Eng- 
lish but Roman. Whatever its relations to Julius 
Cossar, however, it proves in total effect very unlike 
Antony and Cleopatra. That masterpiece of historical 
fiction impresses whoever will accept its conventions 
as actual history. Coriolanus, on the other hand, im- 
presses one neither as actual history nor yet exactly 
as historical fiction. It seems rather a presentation, 
in dramatic form, of a historical story the conception 
of which is affected throughout by a definite philo- 
sophical bias. 

This does not mean, of course, that Coriolanus any 
more than Henry V. may rationally be deemed a 
philosophical treatise. Throughout this study we 
cannot too often remind ourselves that Shakspere was 
an artist, — a man who finding that experience, actual 
or recorded, excited in him specific moods, gave his 
conscious energy to the expression of those moods 
with little care for their ultimate meaning. What 
moods mean is a question for philosophers and critics, 
not for artists ; even in Genesis, the Creator does not 
pronounce his work good until it is finished. An 
artist's moods, however, may be very various ; now 
and again their relation to actual life and conduct may 
be far closer than usual. That seemed the case with 
Henry V. ; in a different way it seems again the case 
with Coriolanus. 

The technical factor of Coriolanus in which this 



328 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

change of mood most distinctly appears is the char- 
acterization. The personages remain individual, of 
course ; by this time Shakspere's hand was too prac- 
tised to leave any figure indefinite. Compared with 
the personages in the plays we have considered from 
Romeo and Juliet forward, however, those in Coriolanus 
seem not so conspicuously individual, as typical. 
Volumnia, for example, is not only the mother of 
Coriolanus ; she is the sort of figure which moralizers 
have in mind when they expound the virtues of " the 
Roman mother " in general. So Virgilia is the de- 
voted wife ; so Menenius Agrippa is the wise old 
friend ; so, more notably still, the tribunes, Sicinius 
and Brutus, are twin types of the demagogue. This 
typical quality of the characters in Coriolanus is so 
marked, indeed, that in the Elizabethan sense of the 
word we may almost call the characterization through- 
out this play " humourous." Such " humourous " 
treatment of character prevails throughout didactic 
fiction. So Coriolanus seems didactic. 

The trait is most palpable in the twin demagogues. 
We have seen forerunners of them in Jack Cade and 
in the tribune whose incendiary eloquence during the 
first scene of Julius Ccesar is so hackneyed at school. 1 
Neither of these, however, is anything like so strongly 
emphasized or so fully developed as Sicinius and 
Brutus. Nor in Henry VI. or Julius Ccesar is there 
anything like so fully developed a presentation of the 
populace whom tribunes or demagogues lead. 

1 See pp. 80, 243. 



CORIOLANUS 329 

The people, in fact, — that great underlying mass of 
humanity in which must reside the physical power of 
any nation, — is presented in Coriolanus with ultimate 
precision. In Henry VI the vivid sketch of Jack 
Cade's rebellion shows a turbulently unreasonable 
mob which quickly comes to grief. In Julius Ccesar, 
the mob is actually the seat of power, which it trans- 
fers, at unreasoning impulse, from one great leader 
to another ; but the great leaders, no unequal rivals, 
stand ready each in turn to personify imperial sover- 
eignty. In Coriolanus, the mob, unreasoning, tur- 
bulent, capricious as ever, becomes a devouring 
monster. It no longer contents itself with transfer- 
ring power ; it seizes power for itself, and once pos- 
sessed of power behaves with suicidal unreason. The 
climax from Henry VI, the experimental chronicle- 
history, through Julius Ccesar, the last play in which 
we feel serene artistic poise, to Coriolanus, which con- 
cludes the period of fiercest passion, may be described 
as from comic, through dramatic, to tragic. 

For what the mob attacks throughout, and in Corio- 
lanus what the mob devours, is literally aristocracy, — 
the rule of those who are best. This, with instinctive 
democratic distrust of excellence or superiority, the 
mob is bound to overthrow. In Shakspere's earlier 
work we have had pictures of aristocracy, strong and 
weak. In Henry V., like Coriolanus a play whose 
mood is didactic, we saw aristocracy wholesomely, 
sympathetically, worthily dominant. In Antony and 
Cleopatra, a play which, with all its chances for an 



330 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Alexandrian mob, is notable for neglect of the com- 
mon people, we saw aristocracy toppling on the verge 
of ruin, decadent through the inherent corruption of 
human nature. In Coriolanus himself we have aris- 
tocracy as nobly worthy of dominance as in Henry V., 
and yet as inexorably doomed as in Antony. The 
fate of Coriolanus, more cruelly tragic than Antony's, 
comes from no decadence, no corruption, no vicious 
weakness, but rather from a passionate excess of in- 
herently noble traits, whose very nobility unfits them 
for survival in the ignoble world about them. 

These traits are palpable in the scene of Coriolanus' 
candidacy. 1 There, too, palpably appears the pride 
which commonplaces declare to be his fatal vice. 
Perhaps it is. Clearly, however, he takes pride in 
nothing but worthily conscious merit ; nor does he 
despise anything not essentially contemptible ; his 
mood is phrased in the lines, 2 — 

" Better it is to die, better to starve, 
Than crave the hire which first we do deserve." 

In the whole play Coriolanus only once despises any- 
thing not really mean ; this is when, in a moment of 
victory, he begs that a poor man shall be spared, and 
then does not take the trouble to remember his name. 3 
The hastiness thus indicated is of course a second 
fault of Coriolanus, whose temper is passionately in- 
firm. Much as he rages, however, his indignation is 
almost always righteous, excited chiefly by what is 

1 II. iii. 2 120-121. 3 I. ix. 79-92. 



CORIOLANUS 331 

really ignoble in humanity. The weakness of his 
temperament is not that his anger is unreasonably 
aroused, but that, once aroused, it is excessive. 

In view of this, the manner in which the character 
of Coriolanus is set forth becomes extraordinary. 
Passionate as the man is, the presentation of his story, 
at least compared Avith that of all the stories we have 
lately considered, seems cold. Like the other charac- 
ters in this play, Coriolanus himself seems, by com- 
parison, almost " humourous." Certainly the temper 
in which Shakspere presents him is almost unsympa- 
thetic ; it is surprisingly free from such suggestion of 
deep personal feeling as has now and again seemed 
like self-revelation. 

The plays we have lately considered contain three 
phases of such self-revelation. From Much Ado 
About Nothing forward there has been a palpable 
sense of irony, at first comic, later becoming a deep 
tragic recognition of destiny. From even earlier — 
from the Merchant of Venice itself — to Antony and 
Cleopatra, there was a constant, crescent sense of what 
delights and mischiefs come from the loves of men 
and women. From Hamlet to Macbeth, there were 
traces of such over-excitement of mind as frequently 
suggested madness. This last trait disappeared with 
Macbeth, unless we detect some relic of it in the tre- 
mendously pregnant style both of Antony and Cleo- 
patra and of Coriolanus itself. With Antony and 
Cleopatra disappeared the second trait, — the haunt- 
ing sense of what mischief women can work. In 



332 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Coriolanus, then, we have left of this unwitting self- 
revelation only an intensified irony, strangely divorced 
from passionate feeling. Here, in short, we have a 
cold abstract contrast between ideally noble traits 
and ideally vile. They clash ; and vileness conquers. 

So far does vileness conquer, indeed, that the real 
climax of Coriolanus, obviously intended for a tri- 
umph of virtue, seems comparatively weak. When 
Volumnia appeals to the magnanimity of her son, 
stirring it to conquer his revengeful pride, 1 her 
speeches hardly justify her success. Instead of 
such supreme eloquence as the moment demands, 
we find admirable rhetoric, versifying aud giving 
sonorous dignity to the harangues of Plutarch ; but 
not wakening them into the inevitable vitality which 
is the master-sign of Shakspere's great work. To the 
end Volumnia remains " the Roman mother." 

To this weakness of climax, which apparently comes 
from weakness of emotional sympathy with a situation 
intellectually understood, may be traced part of the 
artistic dissatisfaction sometimes caused by Coriolanus. 
The play, however, has other tiresome traits. While 
by no means short, it is very monotonous ; it lacks 
the relief of such underplot and comedy as enliven the 
great English chronicle-histories. It lacks, too, the 
beauty of style which might make delightful a less 
significant story. As verse-tests indicate, 2 the style 
of Coriolanus has neither the lucidity nor the grace of 
Shakspere's best writing ; it is pregnant, even over- 

1 V. iii. 131-182. 2 See p. 326. 



CORIOLANUS 333 

packed with meaning, but it suggests no underlying 
music. Shakspere is nowhere less lyrical, nowhere 
the writer of words which, as distinguished from the 
terms of poetry, produce an effect more like that of 
masterly prose. 

The prose of Coriolanus, to be sure, is masterly ; 
the play remains Shakspereanly great. Its greatness, 
however, is not ultimate ; its style lacks simplicity 
and beauty, its conception lacks poise, sympathetic 
serenity, artistic purity. For Shakspere, indeed, as 
we have seen, the mood which underlies it is strangely 
akin to one of political or social philosophy ; and a 
philosophy, too, of a grim, repellent kind. Nowhere 
can we feel more distinctly why to some modern phil- 
anthropic dreamers Shakspere, for all his art, presents 
himself as a colossal enemy, as a tradition which 
advancing Humanity ought ruthlessly to overthrow. 
For, very surely, no work in literature more truly 
and unflinchingly expounds the inherent danger and 
evil of democracy ; nor does any show less recog- 
nition of the numerous benefits which our century 
believes to counterbalance them. 

When we remember that verse-tests, and little else, 
place Coriolanus where we consider it, the relation of 
its mood to those which precede becomes very strik- 
ing. ^Esthetic conviction confirms a classification 
which at first seems blindly inappreciative. From 
the unpassionate irony of Julius Ccesar we have fol- 
lowed Shakspere through the series of plays which 
remain emotionally his greatest. These, we found, 



334 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

artistically expressed a mental activity and an in- 
tensity of passion which uncontrolled might have 
threatened reason itself. These, too, we found, con- 
stantly expressed, in varied terms, a sense of the 
troubles involved in the relations of the sexes. From 
this storm of passion we emerged through the sternly 
objective study of decadent virtue so ultimately made 
in Antony and Cleopatra. Here, in Coriolanus, we 
finally find Shakspere, with almost cynical coldness, 
artistically expounding the inherent weakness of 
moral nobility, the inherent strength and power of 
all that is intellectually and morally vile. 

This mood of cold depression involves a funda- 
mental lack of enthusiasm, unlike anything we have 
met before. The tremendous creative impulse which 
has pervaded everything since the Midsummer Night's 
Dream seems somehow weakened. The same impres- 
sion results finally from the " humourous " treatment 
of character in Coriolanus ; the same from the philo- 
sophical, as distinguished from dramatic, temper 
which pervades it ; the same, too, from the inade- 
quacy of Volumnia's appeal, which ought properly 
to stir one to the depths. Coriolanus is a great trag- 
edy ; but, for all its greatness, one finds in it symp- 
tom after symptom of weakening creative energy. 



SHAKSPERE FROM 16U0 TO 160S 335 



XII. Shakspere from 1600 to 1608. 

In this chapter we have considered the work of 
Shakspere between 1600 and 1608. These years took 
him from the age of thirty-six to that of forty-four, 
and from the thirteenth year of his professional life to 
the twenty-first. They were years, too, when various 
records show him to have been pretty steadily im- 
proving in worldly fortune. 1 It is worth while now to 
pause for a moment, and review our impression of 
this period. 

Once for all, again, we must admit our chronology 
to be uncertain. With the exception of All 's Well 
that Ends Well, however, — which may be the Love's 
Labour 's Won mentioned by Meres in 1598, — none 
of the plays considered in this chapter are known to 
have been alluded to before 1600. The inference is 
that none of them existed earlier. In 1601 there was 
a distinct allusion to Julius Ccesar ; in 1603 and 1604 
there were quarto editions of Hamlet ; in 1608, Antony 
and Cleopatra was entered in the Stationers' Regis- 
ter, and King Lear was published ; in 1609, Troilus 
and Cressida was published; in 1610, Othello and 
Macbeth were acted. Within two years of 1608, then, 
we have evidence that all but three of the plays con- 
sidered in this chapter existed. These three are All 's 
Well that Ends Well, which after all makes little dif- 



336 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

ference in our total impression; Measure for Measure ; 
and Coriolanus. For the dates of the last two we 
must rely wholly on internal evidence, — allusions 
and verse-tests. This evidence, however, places them 
near other plays so like them in mood that we are 
warranted in accepting the result with considerable 
confidence. On the whole, then, we may fairly assume 
that, with the exception of a few stray passages, none 
of the work considered in this chapter existed in 
1600 ; and that all of it was substantially finished by 
1608. Our business now is to define afresh our im- 
pression of Shakspere. 

Already we have similarly defined our impression 
of him three times. First, we found that in 1593, at 
the age of twenty-nine, and after six years of profes- 
sional life, he had displayed a habit of mind by which 
words and concepts seemed almost identical ; he had 
shown unusual versatility in trying his hand at all 
kinds of contemporary writing; and, finally, by en- 
livening characters with the results of actual obser- 
vation, he had made some of his personages more 
human than any others on the English stage. Apart 
from this, the work of these six experimental years 
amounted to little. 

Our next summary revealed a very different state of 
things. In 1600, at the age of thirty-six, and after thir- 
teen years of professional life, Shakspere had produced 
not only his best comedies and histories, but Romeo 
and Juliet, and a constant series of characters which, 
in themselves, suffice to place him at the head of imagi- 



SHAKSPERE FROM 1600 TO 1608 337 

native English Literature. After his prolonged period 
of experiment his creative imagination had at last be- 
gun to work spontaneously, with generally increasing 
precision and power. Pretty clearly, however, it did 
not always .work with equal strength in every direction; 
and the old trait of versatility displayed itself under the 
new aspect of versatile concentration. His imagina- 
tion, too, revealed its creative strength, not by invent- 
ing new things, but by developing old ones. His 
characters certainly began to live like actual people. 
His phrases began so to simplify and to strengthen 
that one instinctively tended to believe him more and 
more conscious of thought, as distinguished from word. 
At least in the matter of stage-business, however, and 
a little less palpably in other matters too, he showed 
so marked a disposition to repeat, with subtle varia- 
tion, whatever he had once found effective, that we 
saw reason to wonder whether he might not have felt 
hampered by a conscious sluggishness of invention. 
No depressing sense, though, of limitation or of any- 
thing else, affected his work, which was animated 
throughout by a robust, buoyant vigor of artistic 
imagination. In the chronicle-histories, too, there 
was a grand sense of historic movement ; in Romeo 
and Juliet, and in all the comedies, there was a de- 
lightful romantic feeling ; in the substitution of self- 
deception for mistaken identity as the chief device 
of comedy, (there was at least increasing maturity ; 
and in the idealized heroines, from Portia to Viola, 
there was clear understanding of how a charming 

22 



338 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

woman can fascinate a romantic lover. J Apart from 
the touch of irony in Much Ado About Nothing, 
however, we could detect hardly any deep knowledge 
of spiritual experience. 

The Sonnets, which we considered next, indicated 
something more. Whatever their origin and their 
history, they not only expressed, in distinctly per- 
sonal terms, the profoundly artistic temperament 
and the consciously mastered literary art already 
impersonally evident in the plays. They revealed, 
besides, a sympathetic understanding of spiritual 
suffering ; and the terms by which they revealed it 
involved equal knowledge of the tragic misery which 
comes from passionate human love. 

Through the Sonnets we approached the plays con- 
sidered in this chapter. In these we have found deeper 
traits still. While, like all the plays of Shakspere, even 
the great tragedies are distinctly intended for the stage, 
— and, what is more, despite thoroughly changed con- 
ditions, are still theatrically effective, — they involve 
on the part of their writer something deeper than mere 
mastery of his art, and vigorous, spontaneous creative 
imagination. Unlike the earlier work, these later 
plays reveal an unswerving artistic impulse. Versa- 
tility of experiment and of concentration gives place 
to sustained intensity of feeling. Over and over again, 
in endless variety of substance and of detail, of con- 
ception and of phrase alike, these plays show them- 
selves the work of one who at least sympathetically 
has sounded the depths of human suffering ; and has 



SHAKSPERE FROM 1600 TO 1608 339 

sounded them, too, in a manner like that already sug- 
gested by the Sonnets. The temperament revealed 
by these plays, meanwhile, confirming our impression 
from the Sonnets, is distinctly individual. Individual, 
too, is the mood which, taken together, the plays 
reveal. Throughout is a profound, fatalistic sense of 
the impotence of man in the midst of his environ- 
ment ; now dispassionate, now fierce with passion, 
this sense — which we called a sense of irony — per- 
vades every play from Julius Ccesar to Coriolanus. 
In the second place, from All 's Well that Ends Well 
to Antony and Cleopatra, there is a sense of something 
in the relations between men and women at once 
widely different from the ideal, romantic fascination 
expressed by the comedies, and yet just what should 
normally follow from such a beginning. Trouble first, 
then vacillating doubt, then the certainty that woman 
may be damningly evil, succeed one another in the 
growth of this mood which so inextricably mingles 
with the ironical. Finally, from Hamlet to Macbeth, 
along with the constant irony and the constant trouble 
which surrounds the fact of woman, we found equally 
constant traces of deep sympathy with such abnormal, 
overwrought states of mind as, uncontrolled by tre- 
mendous power both of will and of artistic expression, 
might easily have lapsed into madness. 

These three traits together reached their climax in 
Macbeth. In Macbeth, too, persisted that increasing 
precision and compactness of style which leads one 
constantly to feel that Shakspere, who surely began 



340 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

his conscious artistic career as a maker of phrases, 
tended almost steadily to consider phrases less, and 
concepts more. The trait of style which first appears 
in Macbeth — the weak ending — points to this conclu- 
sion. Conceivably, of course, only a fresh metrical 
experiment by a writer who had always been eager 
for verbal novelty, this undoubted symptom of a 
weakening verse seems rather evidence that at last 
the writer cared less for how his verse sounded than 
for what it meant. From the very beginning, Shaks- 
pere's lines have tended to mean more and more; 
and this tendency — involving his tremendous activity 
of thought — never weakens to the very end. 

With Macbeth, however, disappeared the essentially 
overwrought mood which appeared with Hamlet ; An- 
tony and Cleopatra, in some respects the most masterly 
of Shakspere's plays, contained no suggestion of this 
fiercest tendency of the great tragedies — the tendency 
toward something like madness. With consummate 
command of conception and of style alike, it presented 
the greatest picture in English Literature of decadent 
virtue ; and in Cleopatra herself it presented such a 
summary of evil womanhood as we have found Shaks- 
pere prone to make of matters from which he was 
passing. In the Falstaff scenes of Henry IV., for ex- 
ample, he gave a final picture of the actual condition 
of life from which he had emerged. In Twelfth Night, 
he recapitulated the whole joyous mood of his early 
comedy. So in Cleopatra he finally summed up, with 
retrospective completeness, his sense of all the harm 



SHAKSPERE FROM 1600 TO 1608 341 

which woman can do ; and with Cleopatra damning 
fascination disappeared. 

Not so the irony, however. In Coriolanus, irony — 
unrelieved, dully passionate — was fiercer, more savage, 
than ever.- Somehow, though, it had become the in- 
spiring force no longer of emotion, but of solid thought. 
The contrast between good and evil had become so 
abstract that it phrased itself, for the first time in 
Shakspere's serious work, rather deliberately than 
imaginatively. For the first time since the Midsum- 
mer Night's Dream, if not indeed for the first time 
of all, the characters set forth by Shakspcre seemed 
rather " humourous " than human ; after the tradi- 
tional English fashion, they seemed made to embody 
traits ; they were not, like the great creations of 
Shakspere, beings which had grown of themselves into 
all the inevitable complexity of human individuality. 
In Coriolanus, for the first time since the experimental 
work of so many years before, we missed the sponta- 
neity of imagination which had pervaded both the 
merely artistic work of Shakspere's second period, 
and this passionate work of his third. 

Exhaustion seems a strange word to use about 
Coriolanus; yet this weakening of creative energy is 
surely a symptom of such exhaustion as should nor- 
mally follow the unprecedented, unequalled activity 
of creative power which had gone before. If exhaus- 
tion it be, however, which this cold, bitter tragedy 
reveals, it is surely an exhaustion which the artist to 
whom it came would hardly recognize as such. For 



342 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

eight years, we have seen, — from thirty-six to forty- 
four, — he had been constantly producing great tragic 
poems, unsurpassed for range and power, and at 
their height full of overwrought spontaneous intensity. 
All along this intensity had been accompanied by a 
growing power both of philosophic thought and of 
verbal expression. Intellectually, Shakspere had never 
been more powerfully active than he shows himself 
in Coriolanus. As the intensity of emotional im- 
pulse weakened, then, while the full power of vig- 
orous thought remained, we may imagine Shakspere 
himself to have felt conscious rather of increasing 
self-mastery than of any loss. Coriolanus, indeed, is 
such work as an artist, with what seems perversity, 
is apt to deem his best. The very weakening of spon- 
taneous power which puts an end to merits of which 
an artist is normally unconscious, emphasizes the 
more deliberate merits of which, above any spectator 
or reader, an artist is aware. 

In these eight years, from 1600 to 1608, then, the 
years when Shakspere surely did the work which 
makes him supremely great, we may believe him at 
last to have been actuated by a really profound series 
of emotional impulses which forced him to express 
them with every engine of his art. At the height of 
this tremendous artistic experience came an over- 
wrought intensity of mind which carried the inherent 
misery of tragic conception almost to the verge of 
madness. Then, slowly, came growing self-control, 
increasing vigor of concentrated thought, finally 



SHAKSPERE FROM 1600 TO 1608 343 

what should seem fresh certainty of mastery. Unwit- 
tingly to the master, however, this very self-mastery 
meant that his great power of spontaneous imagina- 
tion, which for thirteen years, from the Midsummer 
Night's Dream to Anton!/ and Cleopatra, had been 
constant, was at last deserting him. 

In view of this, we may now well turn to the other 
records of English Literature during these eight years. 1 
In 1601 were published Bacon's account of the Trea- 
sons of the Earl of Essex, and Jonson's Poetaster ; in 
1602 came Campion's Art of English Poetry, David- 
son's Poetical Rhapsody, Dekker's Satiromastix, Mars- 
ton's Antonio and Mellida and Antonio's Revenge, 
and Middleton's Randall, Earl of Chester, and Blurt, 
Master Constable ; in 1603 came Bacon's Apology 
concerning the late Earl of Essex, Florio's Montaigne, 
Hey wood's Woman Killed with Kindness, and Jonson's 
Sejanus. This, we remember, was the year when Queen 
Elizabeth died and King James came to the throne. 
In 1604 were published King James's Counterblast 
to Tobacco, and Marston's Malcontent ; in 1605, came 
Bacon's Advancement of Learning, Camden's Remains, 
Chapman's All Fools, and plays by Jonson and Mar- 
ston, — Jonson's Volpone, too, was acted ; in 1606 were 
published plays by Chapman and by Marston, and 
Stowe's Chronicle; in 1607, the Woman Hater — the 
first play of Beaumont and Fletcher — was acted, and 
among the publications were Chapman's Bussy d'Am- 

1 As before, we may conveniently rely on Ryland's Chronological 
Outlines, which suggests enough for our purpose- 



344 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

bois, Dekker and Webster's Westward Ho, Marston's 
What You Will, and Tourneur's Revenger's Tragedy. 
In 1608 — the year when Clarendon, Fuller, and Mil- 
ton were born — Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster 
was perhaps acted ; and among the publications were 
Hall's Characters of Virtues and Vices, and plays by 
Chapman and by Middleton. 

Hasty and incomplete though the list be, it is 
enough for our purpose. A mere glance at it will 
show that, in comparison with either of the earlier 
periods of publication which we considered, 1 the pre- 
ponderance of dramatic work is marked ; and what is 
more, that this work includes not such archaic plays 
as those which Shakspere found on the stage in 1587, 
but the ripest work of Dekker, Heywood, Jonson, 
Marston, and Middleton ; and good work by Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, Tourneur, and Webster. It was 
during the period of Shakspere's great tragic plays, in 
short, that what we now think of as the Elizabethan 
drama came into existence ; and in 1608, when at last 
Shakspere's creative energy showed symptoms of 
exhaustion, he was surrounded on every side by rival 
dramatists, of great inventive as well as poetic power, 
whose work was so good that no contemporary crit- 
icism could surely have ranked it below his own. 

1 See pp. 97, 210. 



X 

TIMON OF ATHENS, AND PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE 

[Timon of Athens was first entered in 1623 and published in the 
folio. 

Its sources are Pay liter's Palace of Pleasure and a passage from the 
Life of Antony in North's Plutarch. 

On internal evidence it has been conjecturally assigned to the period 
we have now reached, about 1 607. 

Pericles was published in quarto, with Shakspere's name, in 1609. 
It was republished in 1611 and in 1619, but was not included in the 
folio of 1623. It was not added to Shakspere's collected works until 
the third folio, — 1 663-4. Among the seven plays then added to the 
old collection this is the only one not generally thought spurious. 

Its sources are Lawrence Twine's Patterne of Painefull Adventures, 
and Gower's Confessio Amantis. Parts of the story may be traced back 
to the fifth or sixth century. 

On internal evidence, Pericles has been conjecturally assigned to 
1608 or thereabouts. 

In both Timon and Pericles there is much matter believed not to be 
by Shakspere. In the Transactions of the New Shakspere Society for 
1874 1 appear conjectural selections of what passages in these plays are 
believed to be genuine. Just what part Shakspere had in these plays, 
— whether he planned, or retouched, or collaborated, — nobody has 
determined.] 

Before this we have seen work by Shakspere which 
is comparatively weak. Even after his experimental 
period, at the time when his imagination was begin- 
ning to display its utmost vigor, we found that when 

1 Pages 130, 253. 



346 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

his attention was concentrated on anything, something 
else was apt to suffer. Since Titus Andronieus itself, 
though, we have found nothing so palpably weak as 
the two plays which we here consider together. In 
total effect, neither of them seems anywhere near 
worthy of Shakspere. 

This weakness, of course, is partly due to the gen- 
erally admitted fact that considerable portions of these 
plays are by other hands. This does not cover the 
matter, however. The Taming of the Shrew is said 
to be largely by other hands ; yet the Taming of the 
Shrew never seems, like Timon and Pericles, essen- 
tially unworthy of a place in Shakspere's work. To 
appreciate why these plays are given such a place, we 
must for the moment abandon our habit of considering 
plays as complete works, and attend only to details. 
Take, for example, Timon's speech to Apemantus : 1 — 

" Thou art a slave, whom Fortune's tender arm 
With favour never clasp'd ; but bred a dog. 
Hadst thou, like us from our first swath, proceeded 
The sweet degrees that this brief world affords 
To such as may the passive drugs of it 
Freely command, thou wouldst have plunged thyself 
In general riot," etc. 

Or again, take Timon's better-known last speech : 2 

" Come not to me again : but say to Athens, 
Timon hath made his everlasting mansion 
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood ; 
Who once a day with his embossed froth 
The turbulent surge shall cover." 

1 IV. hi. 250. 2 V. i. 217, 



TIMON AND PERICLES 347 

Without knowing why, any one who knows Shaks- 
pere's style, must feel sure that Shakspere w r rote these 
lines. They are typical of many in Timon of Athens ; 
weak though the play must remain as a whole, it con- 
tains passages good enough for any one. 

"With Pericles the case is similar. Here, to be 
sure, Shakspere's work is supposed to begin only 
with the third act, where the shipwreck scene has 
such obvious likeness to the better shipwreck scene 
of the Tempest. From thence on we may find many 
traces of Shakspere. The scene between Marina and 
Leonine, in the fourth act, 1 for example, while none 
too powerful, is distinctly in his manner. So is the 
last scene, particularly where Pericles and Marina 
meet ; 2 the situation, which in any other hands than 
Shakspere's might have become intolerably monstrous, 
is treated with a delicacy distinctly his own. 

These occasional passages, amid so much that is 
worthless, give these plays their place among those 
generally ascribed to Shakspere ; and so far as verse- 
tests can guide us under such uncertain conditions, 
both plays seem to belong nearly where we place 
them, — a conclusion which in the case of Pericles 
is supported by the fact of its publication in 1609. 
Thus placed, these plays, so uninteresting in them- 
selves, become unexpectedly notable. 

They belong, we assume, at the end of the passion- 
ate period which produced the great tragedies ; they 
precede, as we shall see, three plays, Cymbeline, the 

1 IV. i. 51-91. 2 V. i. 64 seq. 



348 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 



and the Winter's Tale, of which the temper 
is not gloomy or passionate, but serenely romantic. 
Between this group and the tragic group there is a 
very marked contrast ; the groups express totally 
different artistic moods. 

Such sudden contrasts are common in artistic 
careers. From time to time an artist will find him- 
self possessed of an imaginative impulse which seems 
final. In the mood which that impulse involves — 
grand or petty, solemn or gay — the whole truth of 
life, so far as he can express it, will seem compressed. 
He will go on, expressing himself in phrase after 
phrase concerning this elusive, inspiring impulse. 
All of a sudden his power will lapse. He can do 
no more; he can only caricature his old self, or 
blunder vaguely in search of some new, equally or 
freshly potent motive. The experience is as fre- 
quent in tyros and scribblers as in the great artists 
whose manners change. At one moment, for ex- 
ample, a youth can write sentimental verse ; the 
vein runs dry ; he flutters about searching for rhymes 
and melodies that will not come ; and by and by 
proves to have a vein of light satire, instead, or of 
serious critical thought, and so on. Between these 
two periods of production there will almost always 
come an interval of transitional stagnation, comi- 
cally or painfully like the calm between two adverse 
breezes. 

Between the general mood of Timon and that of 
Pericles there is just such a contrast as marks an 



TIMON OF ATHENS 349 

artistic transition from one dominating mood to an- 
other ; and throughout both plays, even in the parts 
which seem genuinely Shakspere's, there is just such 
weakness of imaginative impulse as normally belongs 
to such transition. All this matter, of course, is 
hypothetical. How much of these plays is Shaks- 
pere's, and when he wrote his part of them, can 
never be determined. That modern verse-tests place 
these plays here, though, quite apart from their 
substance, becomes notable when we consider their 
artistic character ; for, if our chronology be true, 
we have met hardly any fact which goes further 
than the weakness of these transitional plays to prove 
that, vast as Shakspere's genius was, it worked by 
the same laws which govern the sesthetic experience 
of any honest modern artist. 

To consider these plays in more detail, Timon is 
the last work of Shakspere's where the predominating 
mood is gloomy. Broadly, if monotonously planned, 
it is throughout exaspei^ingly undramatic. The plot 
is not only capable of dramatic treatment, but essen- 
tially probable. What happens might happen any- 
where : a man, born rich, wastes his substance, and 
when he is poor finds his swans all geese — wherefore 
misanthropy. Yet, for all this inherent plausibility, 
Shakspere is never less plausible. The first scene, 
to be sure, is broad, firm, and not without action; 
even here, however, the characters are presented so 
externally, so " humourously," that the scene seems 
more like Ben Jonson's work than Shakspere's. At 



350 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

times, indeed, it reminds one rather of the classic 
French comedy than of English. After this first 
scene, one never feels as if anything in Timon were 
so. Except very faintly in Timon himself there is 
never a trace of real, as distinguished from conven- 
tionally "humourous," character; there is nowhere 
a whiff of real atmosphere, either, — what happens, 
takes place only on the stage. In this respect Timon 
is at the opposite pole from the Merchant of Venice : 
there the vigor of Shakspere's creative imagination 
made characters and atmosphere so real that we 
never stop to think what absurd things are going 
on l ; in Timon there is such weakness of creative 
imagination that we can hardly realize how what 
goes on might really occur anywhere. The merit 
of Timon, in short, so far as it has any, lies wholly 
in isolated passages, notable for firmness of phrase. 
It is just such merit as we should expect to 
survive, no matter how fully imaginative impulse 
should desert a poet like Shakspere. After above 
twenty years of faithful work, his masterly style 
was bound to have become a fixed habit of expres- 
sion. Had he failed now and again to phrase single 
thoughts with ultimate felicity, he would almost have 
been writing in a new language. Apart from this mere 
survival of style, Timon throughout indicates exhaus- 
tion of creative energy. Its impotently " humourous " 
treatment of character reminds one, rather painfully, 
of the first symptoms of creative weakness in Corio- 

1 See p. 148. 



PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE 351 

lanus. Its general mood, too, is colder, more cynical, 
darker even than that. The misanthropy which un- 
derlies Timon, indeed, is savage enough to suggest 
the more masterly misanthropy of Swift. If Timon 
be the darkest of all the plays, though, it is likewise 
the most impotent as yet. 

In impotence, however, Pericles perhaps outstrips 
it. Pericles, too, has other symptoms of decline. 
Among Shakspere's plays it is unique for monstrosity 
of motive; and even though its most monstrous pas- 
sages occur in the first act, which is thought to be by 
another hand, Shakspere probably accepted them as 
part of the scheme into which his own work should fit. 
Such monstrosity of motive is a frequent symptom of 
artistic transition. Aware that creative energy is ex- 
hausted, an artist is apt to grow reckless ; and, if he 
be addressing a popular audience, he is tempted to 
supply his lack of imagination by shocking or mon- 
strous devices. Some such phenomenon marks the 
decay of many schools of art, and of none more 
distinctly than the Elizabethan drama. In motive, 
then, even more than in impotence, Pericles is a play 
of the Elizabethan decadence. 

The impotence shown in Pericles, however, differs 
essentially from that of Timon. Here the weakness 
is not so much of exhaustion as of experiment. The 
word "experiment," to be sure, recalls Shakspere's 
earliest plays, which are very unlike this. There is 
nothing in Pericles to remind one of Titus Andronicus, 
or of Henry VI., or of Love's Labour 's Lost, or of the 



352 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Comedy of Errors, or of the Two Gentlemen of Verona. 
Like them, however, Pericles may fairly be regarded 
as preliminary to what shall follow. The difference 
between this experiment and the old ones is that while 
those were formal, this, which now and again reveals 
disdainful mastery of mere form, tries to express a kind 
of motive whose substance is new to Shakspere. 

Unlike Timon, and all the plays we have consid- 
ered since Twelfth Night, Pericles is in no sense 
a tragedy ; it is a romance, which carries its story 
through a period of dismay and confusion to a serene 
close. In this respect, to be sure, we might group it 
with many of the earlier plays, — with the Merchant 
of Venice, for example, and Much Ado About Nothing, 
and As You Like It, and Twelfth Night ; or even in 
some degree with AIVs Well that Ends Well, and 
Measure for Measure. From all of these, however, 
it may be distinguished by at least two traits which 
group it with the three great romances still to come, 
— Cymbeline, the Tempest, and the Winter's Tale : in 
the first place, it attempts within the limits of a single 
performance to deal with the events of a whole lifetime, 
in much such manner as Sidney's Defence of Poesy 
ridiculed. In the second place, the ultimate serenity 
comes not after a short, concentrated period of dis- 
aster, but only after a long and seemingly tragic 
experience of the rudest buffets of life. Underlying 
such a conception as this is a new artistic mood : the 
world still seems evil, to be sure ; but wait long enough, 
and even in this world the evil shall pass. 



TBION AND PERICLES 353 

In this aspect, which some critics, deeming Shaks- 
pere more moralist than artist, take to involve a 
deliberate preaching of reconciliation, Pericles fore- 
shadows the three romances to come. In more than 
one detail, -too, it suggests them. The shipwreck, for 
example, reminds one a little of Twelfth Night and 
the Comedy of Errors, but far more of the Tempest. 1 
The story of Marina has something in common with 
that of Miranda, and more with that of Perdita. The 
recovery of the priestess Thaisa, recalling that of 
^Emilia in the Comedy of Errors, is still more like 
that of Hermione in the Winter's Tale. Clearly 
enough, Pericles bears to the coining romances a 
relation very like that borne to the great comedies 
by the experimental. Just as this second period of 
experiment is shorter, and its fruit less ripe than 
was the case before, however, so the foreshadowing of 
what is to come is less complete. In reviving, after 
eight years of passionate gloom, a fresh gleam of 
romantic feeling, Pericles is perhaps most noteworthy. 

In Timon, then, we have the definite close of the 
period of passionate gloom, — a mood of which in 
Coriolanus we observed traces of exhaustion. In 
Timon, too, we have such paralysis of creative power 
as normally belongs to a period of artistic transition. 
In Pericles, we have the feeble, experimental begin- 
ning of Shakspcre's final period. During this period, 
though it is short and its production less ideally fin- 
ished than that of either the artistic period or the 

> Cf. C. ofE. I. i. 63 seq. ; T. N. I. ii. ; Per. III. i. , Temp. I i. 
23 



354 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

passionate, we shall find something like a fusion, in 
lifelong romances, of all the moods which have pre- 
ceded, — of the darkness of tragedy, the gayety of 
comedy, the serenity of romance. Though of little 
intrinsic worth, then, Timon and Pericles, considered 
in relation to Shakspere's development, may be 
regarded as deeply significant. 



XI 



THE PLAYS OF SHAKSPERE FROM CYMBELrNE 
TO HENRY VIII 



While by common consent, Cymbeline, the Tempest, 
and the Winter s Tale are thought to have been writ- 
ten after the plays we have already considered, and 
before Henry VIII., there is nothing but verse-tests to 
fix their order. The order in which we shall consider 
them, then, is little better than arbitrary. Any line 
of development which we may be tempted to trace 
within the series must be even more conjectural than 
usual. Keeping this in mind, however, we may sug- 
gestively compare these plays with each other ; and, 
with fair confidence in our chronology, we may com- 
pare them with anything which we have considered 
hitherto. 

II. Cymbeline. 

[Cymbeline is first mentioned in the note-book of Dr. Forman. His 
note about it is undated, but as his note of Macbeth is dated April 20th, 

1610, and that of the Winter's Tale is dated May 15th, 1611.it probably 
belongs to about the same period. As Forman died in September, 

1611, that year is the latest possible for his note. Cymbeline was 
entered in 1623, and published in the folio 

The historical parts of Cymbeline are based on Holinshed ; the story 
of Imogen, including both the trunk-scene and the disguise, is based on 



356 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

a story in the Decameron, of which no English version is known to have 
existed before 1 620 ; the death-like sleep of Imogen, so obviously like 
Juliet's, is also like a familiar German story In general, perhaps, the 
resemblance of incidents in Cymbeline to incidents in Shakspere's ear- 
lier plays is more noteworthy than the relation of either to their actual 
sources. 

By verse-tests Cymbeline is placed between Coriolanus and the Tem- 
pest. It is generally assigned to 1609 or 1610; but Mr. Fleay thinks 
that certain parts of it were written as early as 1606, when Shakspere 
was engaged in extracting from Holinshed material for King Lear and 
Macbeth.] 

A hasty critic lately said that Cymbeline sounds as 
if Browning had written it. Though crude, the re- 
mark is suggestive. The style of Cymbeline has at 
least two traits really like Browning's : the rhythm of 
the lines is often hard to catch ; and the thought often 
becomes so intricate that, without real obscurity, it is 
hard to follow. Take, for example, the opening of the 
third scene of the first act, a conversation between 
Imogen and Pisanio : — 

" Imo. I would thou grew'st unto the shores o' the haven, 
And question'dst every sail : if he should write 
Aud I not have it, 't were a paper lost 
As offer'd mercy is. What was the last 
That he spake to thee % 

Pis. It was his queen, his queen ! 

Imo. Then waved his handkerchief ? 

Pis. And kiss'd it, madam. 

Imo. Senseless linen! happier therein than I! 
And that was all 1 

Pis. No, madam ; for so long 

As he could make me with this eye or ear 
Distinguish him from others, he did keep 
The deck, with glove, or hat, or handkerchief, 



CYMBELINE 357 

Still waving, as the fits and stirs of 's mind 
Could best express how slow his soul sail'd on, 
How swift his ship. 

Imo. Thou shouldst have made him 

As little as a crow, or less, ere left 
To" after-eye him. 

Pi's. Madam, so I did." 

This passage is enough to illustrate the peculiar 
metrical structure of Cymbeline. Endstopped lines 
are so deliberately avoided that one feels a sense of 
relief when a speech and a line end together. Such a 
phrase as 

" How slow his soul sail'd on, how swift his ship " 
is deliberately made, not a single line, but two half- 
lines. Several times, in the broken dialogue, one has 
literally to count the syllables before the metrical 
regularity of the verse appears. The meaning, too, 
is often so compactly expressed that to catch it one 
must pause and study. Clearly this puzzling style is 
decadent ; the distinction between verse and prose is 
breaking down. Again, take this passage from the 
scene when Imogen receives the letter of Posthumus 
bidding her meet him at Mill'ord : l — 
" Then, true Pisanio, — 

Who long'st, like me, to see thy lord; who long'st, — 

0, let me bate, — but not like me — yet long'st, 

But in a fainter kind: — O, not like me; 

For mine 's beyond beyond — say, and speak thick; 

Love's counsellor should fill the bores of hearing 

To the smothering of the sense — how far it is 

To this same blessed Milford." 

i III. ii. 53-61. 



358 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Here the actual sentence is only " Pisanio . . . say 
. . . how far it is to . . . Milford." Nothing but the 
most skilful elocution, however, could possibly make 
clear to a casual hearer the broken, parenthetic style. 
The speeches of Iachimo in the last act 1 show the 
same trait more extravagantly still. Altogether, the 
style of Cymbeline probably demands closer attention 
than that of any other work of Shakspere. 

This almost perverse complexity of Cymbeline is 
not confined to details of style. To understand the 
structure of the play you must give it preposterous 
attention. Until the very last scene, the remarkably 
involved story tangles itself in a way which is utterly 
bewildering. At any given point, overwhelmed with 
a mass of facts presented pell-mell, you are apt to find 
that you have quite forgotten something important. 
Coming after such confusion, the last scene of Cymbe- 
line is among the most notable bits of dramatic con- 
struction anywhere. The more one studies it, the 
more one is astonished at the ingenuity with which 
denouement follows denouement. Nowhere else in 
Shakspere, certainly, is there anything like so elabo- 
rate an untying of knots which seem purposely made 
intricate to prepare for this final situation. Situa- 
tion, however, is an inadequate word. Into 485 lines 
Shakspere has crowded some two dozen situations any 
one of which would probably have been strong enough 
to carry a whole act. 

An analysis of these is perhaps worth while. The 

1 V. v. 153 seq. 



CYMBELINE 359 

scene opens "with the triumphal entrance of Cymbe- 
line, 1 who proceeds to knight his heroic sons 2 — 
neither side suspecting the relation. His triumph is 
interrupted by news of the queen's death, 3 and of her 
villainy. 4 " Before this can much upset Cymbeline, 
however, the captives are brought in, 5 and the denoue- 
ments are fully prepared for. To realize what they 
are, we may remind ourselves that we now have on 
the stage not only the mutually unknown father and 
sons, but also the following personages whose identity 
is more or less confused : Imogen, disguised as a 
youth, is known to be herself only by Pisanio, but is 
known to her brothers — whom she does not suspect 
to be her brothers — as the boy Fidele, whom they 
believe dead. Belarius and Posthumus, each in dis- 
guise, are known to nobody. lachimo is present 
undisguised ; but his villainy is known only to Imo- 
gen, and not wholly to her. Meanwhile, nobody but 
the sons of Cymbeline knows that Cloten has been 
killed. One's brain fairly swims. The action begins 
by Lucius, the Roman general, begging the life of 
Imogen, whom he believes to be a boy in his service. 6 
This boon granted, Imogen, instead of showing grati- 
tude to Lucius, turns away from him, with apparent 
heartlessness. 7 Her real object, however, is to expose 
the villain lachimo, 8 — a matter which so fills her mind 
that she has no eyes for her brothers, who half recog- 



1 L. 1. 


2 L. 20. 


8 L. 27. 


* L. 37. 


5 L. 69. 


6 L. 83. 


7 L. 102. 


8 L. 130. 





360 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

nize her as Fidele. 1 Iachimo, caught with the ring 
of Posthumus on his finger, now confesses his villainy. 2 
Thereupon Posthumus, at last enlightened, and believ- 
ing that Imogen has been killed by his command, 
reveals himself in an agony of rage. 3 Imogen inter- 
rupts him, and he, believing her an officious boy, 
strikes her down. 4 Pisanio then reveals her iden- 
tity ; 5 and in telling her story reveals also circum- 
stances which prove her identity with the boy Fidele. 6 
Thus the interest of disguised Belarius, Arviragus, 
and Guiderius is thoroughly aroused ; and when 
Pisanio goes on to expose the wicked purposes of 
Cloten, who is missing, Guiderius declares himself 
Cloten's slayer. 7 Thereupon Cymbeline, who has just 
knighted him, feels bound to condemn him to death. 8 
The execution of this sentence is interrupted by 
Belarius, who is presently condemned too. 9 He 
thereupon reveals the identity of the sons of Cymbe- 
line 10 and his own ; and his statements are confirmed 
by conventional stage birth-marks. 11 In the general 
thanksgiving which follows, Posthumus reveals him- 
self as the missing hero of the battle. 12 Iachimo con- 
firms him; 13 and is thereupon pardoned. 14 Then the 
soothsayer expounds how all this solves the mysteri- 
ous riddle, 15 peace is proclaimed, 16 and, in some savor 
of anticlimax, everybody is happy. 

1 L. 120. a L. 153. 8 L. 209. * L. 229. 

6 L. 231. 6 L. 260. ' L. 287. 8 L. 299. 

9 L. 310. 10 L. 330. u L. 363. 12 L. 407. 

13 L. 412. " L. 417. 1S L.435. ™ L. 459. 



CYMBELINE 361 

In tills denouement, we have specified twenty-four 
distinct stage situations. Over-elaborate as this is, — 
and tautologous, too, for the audience already knows 
pretty much all that is revealed, — it is such a feat of 
technical stage craft as can be appreciated only by 
those who have tried to manage even a single situation 
as strong as the average of these. This last scene of 
Cymbeline, then, which demonstrates the deliberate 
nature of all the preceding confusion, is very remark- 
able. Without yielding to fantastic temptation, we 
may assert that, whatever the actual history of its 
composition, it is just such a deliberate feat of tech- 
nical skill as on general principles we might expect 
from a great artist, stirred to tremendous effort by the 
stinging consciousness of creative lethargy ; and crea- 
tive lethargy seemed the only explanation of Timon 
and Pericles. 

In this respect, the last scene of Gymbeline proves 
typical of the whole play. From beginning to end, 
whatever its actual history, the play is certainly such 
as we might expect from an artist who, in spite of 
declining power, was determined to assert that he 
could still do better than ever. Thus viewed, if hardly 
otherwise, all its perversities become normal. 

Not the least normal thing about the play, too, is the 
material of which its bewildering plot is composed. 
Very slight examination will show that Gymbeline is 
a tissue of motives, situations, and characters which 
in the earlier work of Shakspere proved theatrically 
effective. There is enough confusion of identity for 



362 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

a dozen of the early comedies ; and the disguised 
characters are headed, as of old, by the familiar heroine 
in hose and doublet. Posthumus, Iachimo, and Cloten 
revive the second comic motive — later a tragic one 
— of self-deception. At least in the matter of jeal- 
ousy and villainy, too, Posthumus and Iachimo recall 
Othello and lago. In the potion and the death-like 
sleep of Imogen, we have again the death-like sleep of 
Juliet. In the villainous queen, we have another 
woman, faintly recalling both Lady Macbeth and the 
daughters of King Lear. In the balancing of this figure 
by the pure one of Imogen, we have a suggestion of 
Cordelia's dramatic value. And so on. If, in some 
fantastic moment, we could imagine that Shakspere, 
like Wagner, had written music-dramas, giving to 
each character, each situation, each mood, its own 
musical motive, we should find in Oymbeline hardly 
any new strain. 

The symphonic harmonies in which the old strains 
combined, however, would themselves seem new; for 
the mood of Oymbeline has a quality which, except in 
feebly tentative Pericles, we have not found before. 
Oymbeline leads its characters through experiences 
which have all the gloom of tragedy ; but the inexo- 
rable fate of tragedy is here no longer, and ultimately 
all emerge into a region of romantic serenity. In 
Oymbeline, men wait ; and in spite of their errors and 
their follies, all at last goes well. 

Looking back at the plays we have considered, only 
one appears to have been so completely recapitulatory 



CYMBELINE 363 

as Cymbeline ; this is Twelfth Night. In almost every 
other respect, however, the effects of these two plays 
differ. Among their many differences none perhaps 
is mure marked than their comparative relations to 
the older works which they recapitulate. In Twelfth 
Night, the old material is almost always presented 
more effectively than before ; in Cymbeline, it is almost 
always less satisfactorily handled. To a reader, a.id 
still more to an enthusiastic student, Cymbeline has 
the fascinating trait of at once demanding and reward- 
ing study. On the stage, however, compared with the 
best of Shakspere's earlier plays, it is tiresome. For 
this there are two reasons : it contains too much, — 
its complexity of both substance and style overcrowds 
it throughout; and, with all its power, it lacks not 
only the simplicity of greatness, but also the ease of 
spontaneous imagination. It has amazing cunningness 
of plot; its characters are individually constructed; 
its atmosphere is varied and sometimes — particularly 
in the mountain scenes — plausible ; its style abounds 
in final phrases. Throughout, however, it is laborious. 
Just as in Twelfth Niyht, for all its recapitulation, one 
feels constant spontaneity, so in every line of Cymbeline 
one is somehow aware of Titanic effort. 

In brief, then, Cymbeline seems the work of a 
consciously older man than the Shakspere whom we 
have known. As such, it takes a distinct place in 
our study. In thus placing it, to be sure, we must 
guard against certainty. At best, our results must be 
conjectural ; and we have no external evidence to con- 



364 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

firm us. Always remembering that we may not assert 
our notions true, however, we are free to state and to 
believe them. 

In Timon and in Pericles we saw reason to believe 
that Shakspere's creative power had lapsed. Any 
courageous artist, thus placed, would be stirred by 
consciousness of this lapse to an effort hitherto un- 
approached. We may imagine Shakspere, then, with 
disdainful technical mastery of stage-craft and of 
style, sweeping together all maimer of old material 
which had proved itself effective. We may imagine 
him combining this in a new form, — more compre- 
hensive, more varied, more intricately skilful, and in 
the ultimate sweetness of its romantic harmony more 
significant than any form in which he had previously 
used its components. The result we may imagine to 
be Cymbeline. Though in Cymbeline, however, Shaks- 
pere's power, compared with any other man's, remain 
supreme, it does not, for all his pains, rise to its own 
highest level. Vast though it be, it cannot conceal the 
effort at last involved in its exertion. In this effort, 
one feels the absence of his old spontaneity. Here, 
if nowhere else, Cymbeline reveals unmistakable symp- 
toms of creative decadence. 



THE TEMPEST 365 



III. The Tempest. 



[The Tempest was among the plays paid for, as having been played 
at court, on May 20th, 1613. It was entered in 1623, and published 
in the folio. In that volume it is the opening play, — a fact which has 
given rise to a comically general impression that it was the first which 
Shakspere wrote. 

No unmistakable source has been discovered. Apparently, however, 
the Tempest was in some degree affected by A Discovery of the Bermu- 
das, otherwise called the Isle of Devils ; by Sir Thomas Gates, Sir 
George Somers, and Captain Newport, with divers others, which was 
published in the autumn of 1610. The Utopian scheme of Gouzalo — 
II. i. 147, seq. — seems to be taken from Florio's Montaigne. 

Verse-tests place the 'Tempest between Cymbeline and the Winter's 
Tale. It is generally assigned conjecturally to 1610.] 

In total effect, the Tempest is unique. A comparison 
of its incidents with the records of Elizabethan voyages 
will show one reason why. These voyages — of which 
Sir Walter Ralegh's Discovery of Guiana is a good 
example — reveal a state of things unprecedented in 
human experience, and never to be repeated. The 
general outline of the earth was at last known to every- 
body ; the limits of the physical world had finally been 
ascertained. At the same time, this world was almost 
totally unexplored ; what it might contain nobody 
knew ; behind every newly discovered coast might 
actually lurk Utopia or the fountain of eternal youth ; 
for the moment such an isle as Prospero's was cred- 
ible. The only place where it could possibly be, how- 
ever, was in the Western Seas. The Mediterranean 
was as well known as it is to-day ; and Tunis was what 



366 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

it remained until our own century, — a notorious nest 
of Barbary pirates. While the magic isle, then, which 
now seems the most palpable impossibility of the Tem- 
pest, was not so in the days of Elizabeth, what now 
seem the credible parts of the play — the allusions to 
Milan, Naples, and Tunis — really put the action be- 
yond the bounds of possibility. In laying his magic 
scene between two such familiar regions as Tunis 
and Naples, in making the distance between them 
oceanic, and in serenely disregarding the notorious 
character of Tunis, Shakspere seems deliberately to 
have idealized such facts as the records of the voyages 
gave him. His real topic was human life, in the 
broadest sense ; but just as he idealized the records of 
the voyages, he idealized everything. In the Tempest, 
more than anywhere else, his work seems deliberately 
removed from reality. 

In the matters here idealized, there is much trace of 
such formerly effective material as we found more 
palpably in Cymbeline. The tit-for-tat of the ship- 
wrecked courtiers : revives in some degree the ingen- 
ious verbal pleasantry which began in the plays of Lyly 
and reached its highest point in Much Ado About 
Nothing. Stephano and Trinculo, the drunken comic 
personages, similarly revive Sir Toby Belch and Fal- 
staff and the Fools, mingling with all these a sugges- 
tion of the old distrust of democracy. The story of 
Prospero and his brother is somewhat akin to situa- 
tions in As You Like It, and still more to situations 



THE TEMPEST 367 

in Hamlet. The idyllic and the magic scenes recall 
the mood of As You Like It, and more still that of 
the Midsummer Night'' s Dream. Ariel revives the 
child-actors, who must have been effective not only in 
the fairy poem, but in Richard III. and in King John 
and in Coriolanus} The wreck reminds one of Peri- 
cles, of Twelfth Night, and of the Comedy of Errors ; 2 
the abandoned child is akin to Marina. And so on. 
In the Tempest, however, these old motives arc all 
idealized, refined, subtly varied ; they do not, as in 
Cymbeline, reveal themselves at once. 

Another cause of the unique individuality of the 
Tempest, however, is very palpable. This is a tech- 
nical trait which seems wholly new. In the Comedy 
of Errors, to be sure, Shakspere did something like 
what he has done here ; when translating his classic 
motive into the terms of the Elizabethan theatre, he 
so far adhered to the classic model as to preserve unity 
of time and action, and not to stray far from unity of 
place. 3 In the Tempest, however, there is no sugges- 
tion of a classic motive ; no work in English Literature 
is more romantic ; yet, at the same time, something 
very like the pseudo-classical unities is maintained 
throughout. The play would act in between two and 
three hours ; and between two and three hours would 
probably include everything which happens ; the time of 
the Tempest, then, is actual. The action, too, is almost 
continuous ; and while the scene shifts a little, from 

1 See pp. 113, 141 ; and cf. Coriolanus, V. iii. 127. 

2 See pp. 207, 347. 3 Seep. 91. 



368 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

one part of the island to another, it remains virtually 
unchanged, practically observing also the unity of 
place. As a technical feat, we have found nothing 
comparable to this, unless it be the last scene of Cym- 
beline. There Shakspere packed into less than five 
hundred lines a denouement of unparalleled, deliberate 
complexity, involving some two dozen distinct stage 
situations. In the Tempest, on the other hand, he 
expands his denouement into a whole five-act play. 

This feat involves a degree of pains escaped by 
whoever should write in free romantic form. Before 
the unities can be observed, the material in hand must 
be not only thoroughly collected, but thoroughly 
digested. Plot, character, atmosphere, and style, ac- 
cordingly, must be pretty thoroughly fused; as is the 
case with the Tempest, however, they need not be fused 
indistinguishably. The plot, in substance such a life- 
long romance as the plots of Cymbeline and of Pericles, 
is put together with great firmness. The opening 
scene of shipwreck is just such an adaptation of the 
old induction as we found in As You Like It, in the 
Merchant of Venice, and in the Midsummer NigMs 
Dream} Alone of the scenes in the Tempest, it is 
minutely true to life. What happens is just what 
might have happened to any company of Elizabethan 
seamen whom you had seen sail from Plymouth or 
Bristol. For all any Elizabethan could tell, too, these 
very seamen, bound no one knew quite whither in the 
Western Seas, might actually split on unknown magic 

1 See pp. 110, 146, 159. 



THE TEMPEST 369 

islands. Xo introduction to such matter as was 
coming in the Tempest, then, could have been mure 
skilfully plausible ; and from the moment when the 
castaways set foot on the magic island, all moves 
straight forward, dominated by the deliberately provi- 
dential spirit of Prospero. This deliberately provi- 
dential spirit typifies the treatment of character 
throughout the Tempest. Individual though almost 
every personage be, all are broadly typical, too. In 
this respect the Tempest again recalls the Midsummer 
Night's Bream. There, however, the characters were 
hardly individual at all, but were rather collected in 
three distinctly typical groups; 1 here, on the other 
hand, individualization is probably carried as far as 
is consistent with the delicately idealized atmosphere. 
This atmosphere, as remote from actuality as that of 
the Midsummer Night' 's Dream, is distinct; its sus- 
tained, exquisite dreaminess never becomes palpable 
unreality. We are in another world than our own, 
but a world which is only just beyond the limits of 
the world we all know. On the old coins of Spain 
were stamped the pillars of Hercules, with the legend 
Plus ultra, — More is beyond. The mood into which 
the Plus ultra of old Spain leads one is such as per- 
vades the Tempest. After all, these strange events 
and beings are not a mere mist of fantasy ; they are 
rather a vision of something only just beyond our 
ken. Even though their place be nowhere on earth, 
they might well be somewhere Avithin our reach ; and 

1 See p. 111. 

24 



370 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

if they were, very surely the language there spoken 
would be the lovely poetry of the Tempest. 

At first reading, this style seems very differ- 
ent from that of Cymbeline ; but a very little com- 
parison will show that the difference is really less 
marked than the similarity. Take Prospero's most 
familiar speech : 1 — 

" Our revels now are ended. These our actors, 
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and 
Are melted into air, into thin air : 
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep." 

Compare with those last three lines the lines from 
Cymbeline at which we first glanced : 2 — 

" He did keep 
The deck, with glove, or hat, or handkerchief, 
Still waving, as the fits and stirs of 's mind 
Could but express how slow his soul sail'd on, 
How swift his ship." 

For all the finer music of the Tempest, the metrical 
structure of the two passages is the same. Again, 
compare with Imogen's elaborately parenthesized in- 
quiry, — "Pisanio . . . say . . . how far it is to . . . 
Milford," 3 — Prospero's story of Antonio's treachery : 4 

i IV. i. 148. 2 I. Hi. 10. 

3 See p. 357. * I. ii. 66. 



THE TEMPEST 371 

,; Pros. My brother and thy uncle, call'd Antonio — 

I pray thee mark me — that a brother should 

Be so perfidious! — he whom next tlryself 

01' all the world I loved and to him put 

The manage of my state ; as at that time 

Through all the signories it was the first 

And Prospero the prime duke, being so reputed 

In dignity, and for the liberal arts 

Without a parallel ; those being all my study, 

The government I cast upon my brother 

And to my state grew stranger, being transported 

And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle — 

Dost thou attend me 1 

Mir. Sir, most heedfully. 

Pros. Being once perfected how to grant suits, 
How to deny them, who to advance and who 
To trash for over-topping, new created 
The creatures that were mine, I say, or changed 'em, 
Or else new form'd 'em," etc. 

Leaving to those who love grammar the task of 
parsing these parenthetic excursions, we may content 
ourselves with remarking that the simple sentence 
which underlies this whole structure is no more than 
this : " My brother . . . Antonio . . . new-created the 
creatures that were mine." If more grammatically 
bewildering than the over-excited speech of Imogen, 
this speech of Prospero, to be sure, is more agreeable 
to the ear. In structure, however, the two are almost 
identical. These examples typify the style of both 
plays throughout. Fundamentally similar, they differ 
remarkably in effect ; for in general, while the style 
of Cymbeline is harsh, cramped, obscure, the style of 
the Tempest is sustained, lucid, and easy. In the 



372 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Tempest, we may say, the style is not only mastered, 
but it is so simplified as really to possess the simplicity 
of greatness. 

The Tempest, then, is a very great, very beautiful 
poem. As a poem one can hardly love it or admire it 
too much. As a play, on the other hand, it is neither 
great nor effective. The reason is not far to seek : 
its motive is not primarily dramatic ; the mood it 
would express is not that of a playwright, but rather 
that of an allegorist or a philosopher. 

The providential character of Prospero, for exam- 
ple, is a commonplace; nothing could more distinctly 
mark the divergence of the Tempest from the fate- 
ridden tragedies than his serene mastery both of 
emotion and of superhuman things, by mere force of 
intellect. A commonplace, too, is the fresh assertion 
in the Tempest of that ideal of family reunion and 
reconciliation 1 of which there are traces in Coriolanus, 
in Pericles, and in Cymbeline. A commonplace, as 
well, is the ideal solution of the troubles which actual 
life involves. In the Tempest there are no such doubts 
as Hamlet's or Claudio's, nor any such despair as 
Lear's or Macbeth's : — 

" We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep." 

Not quite so familiar, perhaps, but still often remarked, 
is the comprehensive, prophetic view of social fact, 
typically set forth in Stephano and Trinculo, and above 

1 See pp. 332, 353, 362. 



THE TEMPEST 373 

all in Caliban. The two former sum up the old dis- 
trust of the lower classes. They are not a mob, 
to be sure ; on the magic island there was no chance 
for a mob to breed ; in Stephano and Trinculo, how- 
ever, all" the folly and the impotence of a mob are 
incarnate. With Caliban the case is different: in 
him there is a perception of something not hinted 
at before. 

The single, unique figure of Caliban, in short, typifies 
the whole history of such Avorld-wide social evolution, 
such permanent race-conflict, as was only beginning 
in Shakspere's day, and as is not ended in our own. 
Civilization, exploring and advancing, comes face 
to face with barbarism and savagery. Savage and 
barbarian alike absorb, not the blessings of civiliza- 
tion, but its vices, amid which their own simple virtues 
are lost. Ruin follows. To-day European civiliza- 
tion has almost extirpated Maoris and Hawaiians and 
Australian blacks. At this moment it is face to face 
with the hordes of barbarian Asia and savage Africa. 
Humanity forbids the massacre of lower races ; 
the equally noble instinct of race-supremacy forbids 
any but a suicidally philanthropic man of European 
blood to contemplate without almost equal horror the 
thought of miscegenation. When Caliban would pos- 
sess Miranda, we torment Caliban, but still we feel 
bound to preserve him, — which is not good for the 
morals or the temper of Caliban. That savage figure, 
then, shows a vision so prophetic that at least one 
modern scholar has chosen to study in Caliban the 



374 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

psychology of Darwin's missing link. Marvellously 
prophetic suggestiveness, however, is not exactly a 
condition of theatrical effect. 

The very complexity, indeed, and the essential 
abstractness of the endlessly suggestive, philosophic 
motive of the Tempest is reason enough why, for all 
its power and beauty, the play should theatrically 
fail. Like Cymbeline, though far less obtrusr ely, it 
contains too much. Like Cymbeline it reveals itself 
at last as a colossal experiment, an attempt to 
achieve an effect which, this time at least, is hope- 
lessly beyond human power. Less palpably than 
Cymbeline, then, but just as surely, the Tempest 
finally seems laborious 

It distinguishes itself from Cymbeline, of course, by 
the fact that its construction and its style alike are 
grandly simple. In this simplicity, quite as much as 
in its pervading atmosphere of enchantment, and in 
its general purpose of pure beauty, it rather resembles 
As You Like It, and still more the Midsummer Niglifs 
Bream. In final effect, however, it is as far from 
either of them as from Cymbeline itself. To a great 
degree the motive of As You Like It, and without 
qualification the motive of the Midsummer Night's 
Dream is purely to give pleasure ; whatever else 
than pleasure one may find in either of them is inci- 
dental. The motive of the Tempest, on the other 
hand, we have seen to be philosophic, or allegorical, 
or at least something other than purely artistic. The 
three most familiar quotations from the three plays 



THE TEMPEST 375 

will clearly define them. Take Theseus' great speech 
in the Midsummer NigMs Dream : 1 — 

" The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven ; 
And as imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns theru to shapes and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name." 

Take Jaques' " Seven ages of Man," in As You 

Like It: 2 — 

" All the world 's a stage, 
And all the men and women merely players : 
They have their exits and their entrances ; 
And one man in his time plays many parts, 
His acts being seven ages ; " 

and so on. Compare with these the wonderful speech 
of Prospero : 3 — 

" And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloud capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve 
And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep." 

The three passages will show what one means 
who should call the Midsummer Night's Dream spon- 
taneously fantastic, and the Tempest deliberately 
imaginative. 

This quality of deliberation, perhaps, typifies the 
fatal trouble. Creatively and technically powerful as 

i V. i. 12. 2 II. vii. 139. 3 IV. i. 151. 



376 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

the Tempest is, — sustained, too, and simplified, and 
beautiful, — it has throughout a relation to real life 
which we cannot feel unintentional. In a spontaneous 
work of art, one feels that the relation of its truth to 
the truth of life is not intended, but is rather the result 
of the essential veracity of the artist's observation and 
expression. 1 In such an effect as that of the Tempest, 
then, one grows more and more to feel that, for all its 
power, for all its mastery, for all its beauty, the play 
is really a tremendous effort. 

As such, the Tempest groups itself where verse-tests 
place it. In something more than mere form it is 
akin to Cymbeline and to Pericles. In these we saw 
indications that Shakspere's power was waning ; here 
we find them again. In Cymbeline we found what 
seemed a deliberate attempt to assert artistic power" at 
a moment when that power was past the spontaneous 
vigor of maturity. Here we find another such effort, 
more potent still. Shakspere not only recalls old 
material, and re-composes it ; he digests his material 
afresh, until at first glance it seems new. He adds 
material that is really new, — drawing inspiration from 
the voyages which at the moment were opening a 
world of new, unfathomable possibility. All this, old 
and new, he suffuses with a single motive of serene, 
dominant beauty. In every detail he composes his 
work with unsurpassed skill. His motive, however, 
is not really dramatic, nor even purely artistic ; it is 
philosophic, allegorical, consciously and deliberately 

i See pp. 103, 171, 397, 399. 



THE WINTER'S TALE 377 

imaginative. His faculty of creating character, as dis- 
tinguished from constructing it, is gone. All his power 
fails to make his great poem spontaneous, easy, inevi- 
table. Like Cymbeline, it remains a Titanic effort ; 
and, in an artist like Shakspere, effort implies creative 
decadence, — the fatal approach of growing age. 



IV. The Winter's Tale. 

[The Winter's Tale was seen by Dr. Forman at the Globe Theatre, 
on May 15th, 1611. In an official memorandum made in 1623, it is 
described as " formerly allowed of by Sir George Riche." Though 
Riche undoubtedly licensed plays before August, 1610, this was the 
date of his official appointment as Master of the Revels. The play 
was entered in 1623, and published in the folio. 

The source of the plot is a novel by Robert Greeue, originally pub- 
lished in 1588 under the title of Pandosto, and later republished as the 
Historie of Dorastus and Fawnia. 

Verse-tests place the Winter's Tale later than Cymbeline and the 
Tempest. Taking these in connection with the records mentioned 
above, most critics conjecturally assign it to the end of 1610 or the 
beginning of 1611. Mr. Fleay is disposed to place it a little earlier ; 
probably before the Tempest.] 

The marked individuality of effect which we ob- 
served in both Cymbeline and the Tempest proved on 
scrutiny chiefly due to the fact that the dramatic 
structure of each involves a new and bold technical 
experiment. In each the experiment consists chiefly 
of a deliberately skilful handling of denouement. In 
Cymbeline, after four and a half acts of confusion, 
comes the last scene, coolly disentangling the confu- 



378 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

sion by means of four and twenty cumulative stage 
situations ; in the Tempest, with cine adherence to the 
unities of time, of place, and of action, the denouement 
is expanded into five whole acts. In the Winter's 
Tale we find an analogous individuality of effect, due 
to a similar cause. Structurally the Winter's Tale is 
perhaps the most boldly experimental of all. The play 
is frankly double. The first three acts make a com- 
plete independent tragedy, involving the deaths of 
Mamillius and of Antigonus, and, so far as you can 
tell for the moment, the still more tragic end of Her- 
mione. The last two acts make a complete independent 
comedy, which, taking up the st'ory at its most tragic 
point, leads it to a final denouement of reconciliation 
and romantic serenity. 

Alike complete, the tragedy and the comedy are 
quite as independent as the separate plays in a classic 
trilogy or in an Elizabethan series of chronicle-histo- 
ries. As we saw when discussing Julius Ccesar, too, 
the Elizabethan practice of making consecutive plays 
on the same subject was not confined to chronicle- 
history. Such after-plays of revenge as Chapman's 
Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois and Marston's Antonio's 
Revenge we saw to throw light on the structure of 
Julius Caesar itself. Nor was such prolonged treat- 
ment of a subject confined to tragedy ; in Dekker's 
Honest Whore and Heywood's Fair Maid of the West, 
to go no further, we have elaborate romantic comedies 
in two parts. By its prolongation of popular stories 
into more than one performance, indeed, the Eliza- 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 379 

betlian theatre proves, as in other aspects, queerly like 
the modern Chinese stage. What Shakspere has done 
in the Winter's Tale, then, is to take the plan of a 
double play — peculiar in itself for being half-tragic 
and half comic — and to compress what would nor- 
mally have occupied two full performances into the 
limits of one. With little alteration of the conven- 
tional proportions of a double play, he completely 
alters its dimensions. With the slightest possible 
departure from his models, with characteristic econ- 
omy of invention, he produces by mere compression a 
remarkably novel effect. 

The very fact of compression, however, naturally 
produces a trait which, for theatrical purposes, is 
unfortunate. In both substance and style, the Winter's 
Tale is overcrowded. Take, for example, the passage 
where Hermione has persuaded Polixencs to prolong 
li is visit and Leontes thereupon becomes jealous : 1 — 

" Her. What ! have I twice said well 1 when was 't before 1 
I prithee tell me; cram's with praise, and make's 
A.s fat as tame things: one good deed dying tongneless 
Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that. 
Our praises are our wages : you may ride 's 
With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere 
With spur we heat an acre. But to the goal : 
My last good deed was to entreat his stay : 
What was my first ? it has an elder sister, 
Or I mistake you : 0, would her name were Grace ! 
But once before I spoke to the purpose : when '? 
Nay, let me have't ; I long. 

1 I. ii. 90-120. 



380 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Leon. Why, that was when 

Three crabbed months had sour'd themselves to death, 
Ere I could make thee open thy white hand 
And clap thyself my love : then didst thou utter 
' I am yours for ever.' 

Her. 'T is grace indeed. 

Why, lo you now, I have spoke to the purpose twice : 
The one for ever earn'd a royal husband ; 
The other for some while a friend. 

Leon. (Aside) Too hot, too hot ! 

To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods. 
I have tremor cordis on me : my heart dances ; 
But not for joy ; not joy. This entertainment 
May a free face put on, derive a liberty 
From heartiness, from bounty, fertile bosom, 
And well become the agent ; 't may, I grant ; 
But to be paddling palms and pinching fingers, 1 
As now they are, and making practised smiles 
As in a looking-glass, and then to sigh, as 't were 
The mort o' the deer ; 0, that is entertainment 
My bosom likes not, nor my brows ! Mamillius, 
Art thou my boy 1 " 

In more ways than one the passage is typical of the 
Winter s Tale. During less than twenty lines, to be- 
gin with, Leontes is carried through an emotional ex- 
perience which in the case of Othello had been prepared 
for by above two acts, and when it came occupied 
nearly two hundred and fifty lines. 2 Again, while in 
Othello every one of these lines is clear and fluent, 
this passage from the Winter's Tale is both obscure 
and crabbed. The verse is more licentiously free than 
ever before, and at the same time overpacked with 

' Cf. Hamlet, III. iv. 185. 2 Othello, III. iii. 35-279: 



THE WINTER'S TALE 381 

meaning. After Shakspere's regular fashion, too, this 
scene from the Winter s Tale proves both in substance, 
and to a less degree in phrase, reminiscent. In all 
these traits, which pervade the Winter's Tale, the play 
resembles Cymbeline and the Tempest as clearly as it 
resembles them in its boldly experimental structure 
and its serenely romantic motive. 

The overcrowding of the style is what most distin- 
guishes these three last plays from what precede. In 
Shakspere's earlier work, almost to the end of the 
tragic period, one generally felt that, when composing 
plays, he always endeavored to present his material, 
however serious, in such form as should be acceptable 
to an audience. In these last plays, one is aware of a 
radically different mood. The playwright, despite his 
vigorous technical experiment, has at last become a 
conscious poet. He cares about substance rather than 
style. Thoughts crowd upon him. He actually has 
too much to say. In his effort to say it, he disdain- 
fully neglects both the amenity of regular form, and 
the capacity of human audiences. The only vehicle 
of expression at his disposal, meanwhile, was the pub- 
lic stage ; and this vehicle his artistic purposes — now 
rather intellectual than emotional — had finally out- 
grown. In the Winter's Tale this trait is more pal- 
pable than anywhere else ; Shakspere's style is surely 
more decadent than ever before. 

In the Winter's Tale, too, the old trait of recapitula- 
tion is quite as palpable as in Cymbeline. Shakspere, 
to be sure, keeps fairly close to Greene's novel ; but 



382 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

Greene's novel itself deals chiefly with matters which 
Shakspere's earlier plays had proved effective ; and 
what Shakspere adds — Paulina, for example, and 
Autolycus, and the Clown — is almost always directly 
taken from his old repertory. How recapitulatory the 
Winter's Tale is, any one can see. In the tragic part, 
the jealousy of Leontes, clearly akin to that of Posthu- 
mus, revives also the jealousy of Othello ; and at the 
same time dispassionately revives a distinct phase 
of such overwrought self-deception and unbalance of 
mind as pervaded the great tragedies. Hermione, in 
her undeserved fate, resembles Imogen, and Desde- 
mona, and Hero ; at her trial she is like Queen 
Katharine. Paulina, a character introduced by Shaks- 
pere, has obvious analogies to Emilia in Othello, and 
to Beatrice, so far as Beatrice is concerned with the 
troubles of Hero. Mamillius, like Ariel a child-actor, 
is like the Duke of York in Richard III. and Prince 
Arthur in King John. 1 To pass to the comedy of 
the last two acts, the very entry of Autolycus is 
reminiscent : 2 — 

"I have served Prince Florizel and in my time wore 
three-pile; but now I am out of service: . . . My traffic is 
sheets; when the kite builds, look to lesser linen. My 
father named me Autolycus; who being, as I am, littered 
imder Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered 
trifles. With die and drab I purchased this caparison, and 
my revenue is the silly cheat. Gallows and knock are too 
powerful on the highway : beating and hanging are terrors 
to me: for the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it." 
1 See p. 367. 2 IV. iii. 13-32. 



THE WINTER'S TALE 383 

Here, in the cramped dialect of this period, is a 
plain statement of such a situation as FalstafFs 
when the Prince had discarded him. The relations 
of Polixenes to Florizel are another clear reminis- 
cence of Henry IV. Again, the Shepherd and the 
Clown revive not only the conventional boors of the 
early comedy, 1 but the relations between Falstaff and 
Shallow, 2 a bit of the absurdity of Sir Andrew Ague- 
cheek, and incidentally the old distrust of democracy. 
The recovery of Hermione resembles those of iEmilia 
in the Comedy of Errors, of Hero in Much Ado About 
Nothing, and of Thaisa in Pericles? In the great pas- 
toral scene 4 there is not only abundant confusion of 
identity — the chief trait of all the early comedies — 
but an atmosphere which recalls the open-air scenes of 
Love's Labour 's Lost, of the Midsummer Night's Dream, 
of the last act of the Merry Wives of Windsor, and of 
As You Like It. 

All but the last of these reminiscences call to mind 
passages which, at least in vitality, are better than 
those in the Winter's Tale. Compare, for example, 
the characters of Falstaff and of Autolycus : Falstaff, 
though presented in a more archaic manner, is drawn 
from the life ; Autolycus, though sympathetic and 
amusing, is so compressed and idealized, that he is 
like one of those finished pictures whose every detail 
somehow reveals that they are drawn from memory 
or from sketches. Better still, compare the final en- 

i IV. iii. 702 seq. 2 Ibid, and V. ii. 134 seq. 

3 See pp. 91, 195, 353. * IV. iii. 



384 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

lightenment of Othello 1 with the similar enlightenment 
of Leontes. 2 This is generally typical of the Winter's 
Tale. Tolerably effective in conception, it is at once 
too compressed for full effect, and perceptibly less 
spontaneous, less simple, less plausible, less masterly, 
than the greater work which it instantly recalls. 

This is not unduly to dispraise the Winter's Tale. 
In many traits — in composition of plot, in firm grasp 
and contrast of character, in variety and precision of 
atmosphere, in freedom and pregnancy of phrase — 
the Winter's Tale is constantly above any power but 
Shakspere's. Compared with his own work elsewhere, 
however, the Winter's Tale rarely shows him at his 
best. The only passage, indeed, which may fairly 
be deemed better than similar passages which have 
come before is the pastoral scene. 3 Here for once, 
amid all the added ripeness of feeling which' per- 
vades this romantic period, we find something like 
Shakspere's full, spontaneous creative power. With 
it comes such a whiff of pure country air as calls 
to mind the actual harvest homes of rural England, 
and as sets critics who seek Shakspere's " inner life " 
to saying wise things about the effect on the man's 
morals of his return to Stratford. Such guesses as 
this are unprovable vagaries ; all that one can safely 
say is that, unlike any scene which we have con- 
sidered since Antony and Cleopatra, this pastoral 
scene, though full of romantic unreality, is plausible. 

1 Othello, V. ii. ] 02-282. 

2 III. ii. 132-173. 3 IV. iii. 



THE WINTER'S TALE 385 

With all its lack of realism, all its cunning stage- 
craft, all its lovely poetry both of conception and of 
expression, the scene seems so spontaneous, so racy, 
so inevitable, that the old mood of the best time steals 
on you unawares. Again and again you yield to the 
illusion, feeling as if once again all this were true. 

In the Winter's Tale, however, there is at least one 
touch which tends to show that Shakspere would de- 
liberately guard against any such impression of reality. 
Greene's novel makes Bohemians sail to sea-bound 
Sicily ; Shakspere deliberately makes Sicilians sail 
to sea-bound Bohemia. At this period, as wc have 
seen again and again, the decay of spontaneous im- 
pulse gives good reason for believing Shakspere "to 
have been constantly deliberate. If, then, his wan- 
ton departure from geographic fact be deliberate, its 
reason should seem to be that Shakspere meant to 
place all this romance in no real world, but rather 
in such a world just beyond the limits of reality as 
he created in the Tempest, 1 — a world where Tunis 
was no longer the lair of Barbary pirates, but a 
chivalrously romantic kingdom, a world where the 
Mediterranean expanded into an ocean as limitless as 
the Western Seas, a world where close to the spot in 
which from earliest times geographers have rightly 
placed Sicily, a King of Naples might be cast away 
on the magic isle of Prospero, there to find — in full 
agony of race-conflict — the savage Caliban. Such 
romances as we are now dealing with, this deliberate 

1 See p. 369. 
25 



386 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

fantasy seems to say, are never real. They are the 
dreams, the ideals which, fancied in a world alien to 
ours, make tolerable the inexorable facts of our own. 
Inexorable fact, despairing sense of fate, expired with 
Coriolanus, or at latest with Timon. The plays which 
follow breathe instead an atmosphere of idealism, 
wherein the troubles of actuality may all merge in 
the delights of free fancy. 

Free, at any rate, beyond Cymbeline or the Tem- 
pest, we may fairly call this Winter's Tale. Less 
complicated in plot than the one, it is less elaborately 
artificial than the other. More varied in character 
than either, it is at once more firmly individual than 
the Tempest, and less laboriously so than Cymbeline. 
Its atmosphere is all its own. Its style has the care- 
lessness of disdainful mastery. For all this freedom, 
however, one can hardly feel that theatrically the 
Winter's Tale could ever have been much more satis- 
factory than the unsatisfactory Cymbeline or Tempest. 
The structural experiment of deliberate duality is per- 
haps the boldest of the three. In every technical 
detail the work shows complete, disdainful mastery 
of power. Again and again, however, except in the 
great pastoral scene, this mastery lacks the final 
grace of unconscious spontaneity, just as the style 
lacks final simplicity. Throughout the play, in short, 
one is aware of a self-consciousness, of a deliberation 
which makes one hesitate before guessing the full in- 
tention of this touch or that. This conscious delib- 
eration reveals just such trace of growing age as 



HENRY VIII 387 

we found in Oyrribeline and in the Tempest. Con- 
scious deliberation means effort ; effort means crea- 
tive exhaustion. Here, perhaps, the effort is more 
masterly, less palpable, than before ; here still, how- 
ever, the effort cannot conceal itself ; and the effort 
tells the final story, — Shakspere's old spontaneous 
power was fatally gone. 



V. Henry VIII. 



[Henry VIII., as we have it, was first entered in 1623 and published 
in the folio. Various records prove, however, that a play on this sub- 
ject was given at the Globe Theatre on June 29th, 1613. Carelessness 
in the discharge of a gun set fire to the theatre, which was totally 
destroyed. Quite what relation this play of 1613 bore to the Henry 
VIII. we possess is uncertain. 

The sources of the present play are Holinshed, Hall, and Foxe's 
Martyrs. 

The famous criticism of Mr. Spedding — summarized in the intro- 
duction to the Leopold Shakspere and in the Henry Irving edition — 
virtually demonstrated that a considerable part of this play is by John 
Fletcher. Mr. Fleay 1 believes that much is also by Massinger; and 
that the only scenes really by Shakspere are I. ii. ; II. iii. ; and II. iv. 
Certain critics go so far as to question whether any of the play is 
genuine. 

If Shakspere's at all, this play is probably later than any other. It 
may be conjecturally assigned to 1612 or 1613.] 

In most editions of Shakspere, Henry VIII. is 
printed immediately after Richard III. Thus placed, 
its maturity of detail makes it seem thoroughly ad- 

1 Life, 250-252. 



388 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

mirable. Here, one exclaims, is no tissue of impos- 
sible villainy and operatic convention ; here, rather, 
is real life. How any one could for a moment deem 
such work not Shakspere's own is hard to see. 

Coming to Henry VIII., on the other hand, as we 
come to it now, where modern chronology places it, 
one finds its effect strangely different. When one 
has considered all the masterpieces of comedy, of 
history, and of tragedy, when one has considered, 
too, the tremendous efforts made in the three great 
romances which we have just put aside, Henry VIII 
seems comparatively thin, uncertain, aimless. In- 
stinctively one's sympathies take a different turn. 
Instead of wondering how work like this can be as- 
cribed to anybody but Shakspere, one finds one's self 
at a loss to see how work like this can rationally be 
ascribed to Shakspere at all. Of course there are 
masterly touches in Henry VIII ; of course, too, at 
least Queen Katharine and Cardinal Wolsey are 
very notable characters. After all, however, is there 
anything in either the style or the characterization 
of Henry VIII which should make one surely affirm 
any part of this undoubtedly collaborative work to be 
by Shakspere's hand ? May not one rationally doubt 
whether this is anything more than what John Webster 
stated his White Devil to be, 1 — a play to be judged by 
the standards of the masters ? 

For our purposes such questions need no answer. 
The very fact of their existence is more instructive 

1 See p. 20. 



HENRY VIII 389 

than the most definite of answers could possibly be; 
for it proves that, whoever wrote or collaborated in 
Henry VIII., the play is broadly typical of what the 
English stage was producing when Shakspere's writing 
ended. 

At the very beginning of our study, we met a simi- 
lar state of things. Like Henri/ VIII. the two plays 
to which we first gave attention — Titus Andronieus 
and Henry VI — were ascribed to Shakspere in 1623, 
and have recently been doubted. For our purposes, 
however, we found the doubt more instructive than 
any certainty could have been. Whoever wrote Titus 
Andronieus or Henry VI, we found, the plays were 
admirably typical of the theatrical environment amid 
which Shakspere's work began. 

What this environment was like we may remind 
ourselves by a glance at the opening scene of Henry 
VI. In Westminster Abbey are assembled the funeral 
train of King Henry V. ; and this is how his brothers 
and uncles begin to discourse : — 

" Bed. Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night ! 
Comets importing change of times and states, 
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky, 
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars 
That have consented unto Henry's death I 
King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long ! 
England ne'er lost a king of so much worth. 

Glou. England ne'er had a king until his time. 
Virtue he had, deserving to command: 
His brandished sword did blind men with his beams ; " 

and so on, for six lines more. 



390 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

" Exe. We mourn in black : why mourn we not in blood 1 
Henry is dead and never shall revive: 
Upon a wooden coffin we attend, 
And death's dishonourable victory 
We with our stately presence glorify ; " — 

there are six more lines of this. 

" Win. He was a king bless'd of the King of kings. 
Unto the French the dreadful judgment-day 
So dreadful will not be as was his sight. 
The battles of the Lord of hosts he fought: 
The church's prayers made him so prosperous." 

So far goes the opening quartette of lament, which 
nowadays would take the form of grand opera. Glou- 
cester now breaks in, beginning the strain of discord 
which is to be silenced only with the other Gloster — 
Richard III. 

" Glou. The church! where is it? Had not churchmen pray 'd, 
His thread of life had not so soon decay'd : 
None do you like but an effeminate prince, 
Whom, like a school-boy, you may over-awe." 

This is more than enough to remind us of all the 
archaic, operatic conventions which beset the stage 
when Shakspere began writing. . Whether his or 
not, these lines are such as in the beginning he 
might have written. 

Turn now to the opening scene of Henry VIII. : 
the Dukes of Norfolk and of Buckingham meet in an 
antechamber of the palace, and the following talk 
ensues : — 

" Buck. Good morrow, and well met. How have ye done 
Since last we saw in France 1 






HEXRY VIII 391 

Nor. I thank your grace, 

Healthful; and ever since a fresh admirer 
Of what I saw there. 

Buck. An untimely ague 

Stay'd me a prisoner in my chamber when 
Those suns of glory, those two lights of men 
Met in the vale of Andren. 

Nor. 'Twixt Guynes and Arde : 

I was then present, saw them salute on horseback; 
Beheld them, when they lighted, how they clung 
In their embracement, as they grew together; 
Which had they, what four throned ones could have 

weigh'd 
Such a compounded one ? 

Buck. All the whole time 

I was my chamber's prisoner. 

Nor. Then you lost 

The view of earthly glory : men might say, 
Till this time pomp was single, but now married 
To one above itself ; — " 

and so on to a brilliant description of the Field of the 
Cloth of Gold. The calm rationality of this dialogue, 
its almost prosaic modernity, its profound acknowledg- 
ment of the actual conditions of fact combined with a 
free, breaking use of blank-verse and of not too extra- 
vagant metaphor, are more than enough to remind us, 
if we needed reminding, of the conventions which beset 
the stage when Shakspere's work ended. Whether his 
or not, these lines are such as in the end he might 
have written. 

From the doubtful Henry VI. we have proceeded 
through a long series of indubitably genuine works 
to the equally doubtful Henry VIII. Nowhere on the 



392 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

way has any work seemed very unlike those about it. 
The contrast between the first doubt and the last, 
then, is startling ; nothing could more clearly demon- 
strate how Shakspere marks the progress of English 
Literature from a state which seems wholly of the past 
to one which seems almost like the present. For our 
purposes, we need look no longer at Henry VIII. 



VI. Shakspere about 1612. 

For our purposes, too, we need pause very little to 
summarize our impression of the last works of Shaks- 
pere, as they have appeared in this chapter. Details 
of their dates can never be decisively settled. There 
is every reason to believe, however, that, in some order 
or other, the plays we have here considered were all 
written after those which we considered before, and 
that they virtually complete Shakspere's work. 

Allowing them the widest chronological range ad- 
mitted by any consenting criticism, we find them to 
belong to the years of Shakspere's life which carried 
him from forty-live to forty-eight, and from the 
twenty-second year of his professional work to the 
twenty-fifth and last. In all three of the unques- 
tioned plays, and quite as much in the doubtful Henry 
VIII., we found constant traces of declining creative 
power, which even the tremendous technical efforts of 
Cymbeline and the Tempest and the Winter s Tale 



SHAKSPERE ABOUT 1612 393 

were powerless to conceal. What impulse was left 
the man, after the complete break of his spontaneous 
power in Timon and Pericles^ was an impulse rather 
of philosophic thought than of artistic emotion. For 
such a "purpose there are few worse vehicles than 
the public stage. 

Compare with these plays, now, the general records 
of publication during the years in question. 1 In 1609, 
the year to which we conjecturally assigned Cymbe- 
line, Beaumont and Fletcher's Maid's Tragedy is said to 
have been acted ; and among the publications were not 
only the Sonnets, Troilus and Cressida, and Pericles, 
— the last three works of Shakspere which originally 
appeared during his lifetime, — but the final version 
of Daniel's Civil Wars, Dekker's Grull's Hornbook, 
Drayton's Lord Cromwell, Jonson's Epieoene and The 
Case is Altered, and the Douay translation of the 
Bible. In 1610, the year to which we conjecturally as- 
signed the Tempest, Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight 
of the Burning Pestle and Jonson's Alchemist are said 
to have been acted ; and among the publications were 
Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients, twelve books of 
Chapman's Iliad, Donne's Pseudo-Martyr, Fletcher's 
Faithful Shepherdess, and the final edition of the 
Mirror for Magistrates. In 1611, the year to which 
we conjecturally assigned the Winter's Tale, Beaumont 
and Fletcher's King and No King, and Jonson's Cati- 
line were acted ; and among the publications were 
twelve more books of Chapman's Iliad, Coryat's Cru- 

1 Rjland : Chronological Outlines of English Literature. 



394 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

dities, Dekker and Middleton's Roaring Gfirl, Donne's 
Anatomy of the World, Speed's History of Great Brit- 
ain, Tourneur's Atheist's Tragedy, and the Authorized 
Version of the Bible. In 1612, the year to which — 
more conjecturally still — we assigned Henry VIII., 
came the second edition of Bacon's Essays, two plays 
by Beaumont and Fletcher, Hall's Contemplations, and 
John Webster's White Devil, whose preface, as we have 
seen, mentioned Shakspere as an honored tradition. 1 

The hasty list is enough for our purpose. At this 
time, when Shakspere's power showed plain signs of 
weakening, English Literature was at once more mod- 
ern and more fertile than ever. Of the riper dram- 
atists, whose work is full of effective invention, all 
but the distinctly decadent Ford and Massinger were 
in their prime. There is small wonder, then, that 
Shakspere wrote no more. Competition was stronger 
than ever ; and, at the same time, his purposes had 
outgrown his vehicle, and his spontaneous impulse 
had ceased. Both as an artist and as a man he had 
more to lose than to gain. • 

1 See pp. 20, 408. 



XII 



WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

We have now reached the last stage of oar study. 
We have glanced at the facts of Shakspere's life ; we 
have briefly considered the condition of English Litera- 
ture when his work began ; and, with what detail has 
proved possible, we have considered, in conjectnrally 
chronological order, all the works commonly ascribed 
to him. The few remaining works which are probably 
more or less his — Edward III., the Two Noble Kins- 
men, and a few lyrics — are not generally included in 
the standard editions. Less accessible, then, than 
what we have considered, they are also less interest- 
ing ; nor do they contain anything which should alter 
our conclusions. Our conclusions, however, may well 
be affected by another matter at which we have 
glanced, — the English literature, in general, which 
came into existence between 1587 and 1612, during 
which interval, in some order or other, the works of 
Shakspere were certainly produced. We are ready, 
then, finally to review our impressions. 

In looking back over our course, perhaps nothing is 
more notable than its limits. We are so far from 
having covered the whole subject of Shakspere, that 



396 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

we have neglected parts of it important enough to 
make our neglect seem almost a confession of igno- 
rance. Not to speak of endless details, we have 
hardly touched on the range or the quality of his 
genius ; we have thought little about the subtleties 
of his art ; we have hardly glanced at the scope 
and the character of his philosophy ; nor yet have we 
discussed at all the surprising range of his learning. 
And so on. The truth is that the subject of Shaks- 
pere is inexhaustible. Whoever would deal with it, 
must perforce neglect much of it. At any moment, 
then, those phases may best be neglected which happen 
at that moment to have been best discussed elsewhere. 
Such a phase, clearly, is Sbakspere's genius. In 
the line arts, we remember, a man of genius is he 
who in perception and in expression alike, in thought 
and in phrase, instinctively so does his work that his 
work remains significant after the conditions which 
actually produced it are past. The work of any man 
of genius, then, is susceptible of endless comment and 
interpretation, varying as the generations of posterity 
vary from his and from one another. Such interpre- 
tative comment is always suggestive. The most nota- 
ble example of it concerning Shakspere may perhaps 
be found in the writings of Coleridge. Foreign alike 
to Shakspere's time and to our own, the mood of 
Coleridge was not long ago vitally contemporary. 
While to-day what Coleridge says about Shakspere 
often seems queerly erratic, it must always be inter- 
esting, both as an important phase of human thought, 



WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 397 

and as lasting evidence of how Shakspere's genius 
presented itself to one who came near being a man of 
genius himself. In some such manner the genius of 
Shakspere, like any other, must present itself, with 
ever fresh significance, to men of our own time and of 
times to come. Like Nature herself, the work of the 
great artists must always possess a fresh significance 
for every generation which comes to it with fresh eyes. 
As we have seen, however, this significance is gener- 
ally implicit. It is there because, by the very laws of 
his nature, the artist worked with instinctive fidelity 
to the greater laws which govern actual life. In a 
course of study like ours, then, whose object is chiefly 
to see the artist as he may have seen himself, we 
may well neglect those aspects of his work which are 
visible only after the lapse of centuries. On these, 
as the centuries pass, there will always be emphasis 
enough. The danger is not that Shakspere's genius 
will be forgotten ; but that, in admiration for the 
aspects in which, from time to time, that genius 
defines itself, people may fatally forget the truth 
that Shakspere's work really emanated from a living 
man. 

Again, there is a great deal of criticism about the 
art of Shakspere, — discussion as to how conscious 
it was, how deliberate, how essentially fine. One still 
hears much debate as to whether the free, romantic 
form of his dramas be a nobler thing or a meaner 
than the more rigid form of the classics, and of their 
modern imitations. Such discussion is interesting ; 



398 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

and so far as it deals with the precise artistic methods 
of Shakspere might well have found place in our 
study. Here and there, indeed, as space permitted, 
we have touched on it, — most notably, perhaps, in 
showing how the finished form of the Midsummer 
Night's Dream grew at once from old motives and 
from old and crude conventions. 1 So far, however, 
as such discussion deals with general matters, — ques- 
tioning, for example, whether classic art or romantic 
be the finer, — it is foreign to our purpose, and in 
some aspects akin to the less famous discussion as to 
whether shad or custard be the greater delicacy. For 
our purposes, we may be content with knowing that 
Shakspere, an Elizabethan playwright, was as much 
bound by the conditions of his time to write in the 
Elizabethan manner as was Sophocles of Athens to 
compose his tragedies after the manner of the Greeks. 
Whoever, then, would finally or intelligently criticise 
the art of Shakspere must first master, as hardly any- 
body has yet mastered, the conditions of Shakspere's 
theatre. Much of the extant criticism of Shakspere's 
art resembles that of Gothic cathedrals which pre- 
vailed when pseudo-classic architecture was all the 
fashion ; much of what remains resembles that criti- 
cism of the same Gothic churches which refers the 
origin of their aisles and arches to the trunks and 
boughs of forest alleys. Partly for want of space, 
then, partly for want of sufficient knowledge as yet, 
we have studied Shakspere's art only so far as was 

1 See pp. 107, 110. 



WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE 399 

necessary to make clear the general conditions of 
his time. 

Concerning Shakspere's philosophy, — his deliberate 
teaching, — the state of affairs is much like that con- 
cerning his genius. Earnest students innumerable 
have read between his lines endless lessons, some of 
which are doubtless very wise and valuable. Just 
how far he meant to put them there, however, is 
another question. We have seen enough of Eliza- 
bethan Literature to recognize that much of its aphor- 
ism is nothing intentionally more serious than a fresh 
combination of language. In the very prevalence of 
its aphorism, however, we must have recognized a 
symptom at once of a general appetite for proverbial 
philosophy, and of that generally ripe state of prac- 
tical experience which at intervals in history gives 
more or less final expression to a state of life about 
to pass away. The aphoristic wisdom of Elizabethan 
Literature, so far as it is more than verbal, broadly 
expresses the experience of mediasval England. To 
this aphorism Shakspere added much. Very proba- 
bly, though, what he added was no system of phi- 
losophy ; it was rather a series of superbly final 
phrases, now and again combining to produce a com- 
plete artistic impression, — such as the pessimism of 
Macbeth, or the profound idealism of the Tempest, — 
which to him would have seemed rather emotional 
than dogmatic. In one sense every artist is a philoso- 
pher ; but as philosophy is commonly understood, 
artists are apt to be unconscious philosophers, — phi- 



400 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

losophers rather by the inevitable law of their nature 
than by any deliberate intention ; and, whatever else we 
have done, we have never allowed ourselves to forget 
that from beginning to end Shakspere was an artist. 

Another matter, much discussed nowadays, we have 
hardly glanced at. Nothing more surprises such 
readers of Shakspere as are not practical men of 
letters than the man's apparent learning. To one 
used to writing, the phenomenon is less surprising. 
To translate technical matters from a book merely 
glanced at, into such finished terms as the unini- 
tiated suppose to imply years of study and research, 
is within anybody's power. Whoever will take a few 
Elizabethan books, — North's Plutarch, for example, 
Paynter's Palace of Pleasure, Foxe's Martyrs, Hol- 
inshed, and Coke on Littleton, — and, with the help of 
stray passages from all, translate some narrative from 
one of them into blank-verse dialogue, will produce 
an effect of erudition which shall profoundly impress 
not only his readers but himself. Whoever has a few 
compendious works at hand and knows how to use 
them, in fact, can make himself seem a miracle of 
learning to whoever does not know his secret. In 
Elizabethan England almost all books were compen- 
dious ; so was the common talk of all intelligent men, 
— for learning was not yet specialized. Given these 
facts, and given the exceptionally concrete habit of 
thought and phrase native to Shakspere, and Shaks- 
pere's learning is no longer a marvel, except to those 
who insist on finding it so. 



WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 401 

To pass from matters neglected to a matter pur- 
posely reserved, nothing is more notable to a student 
of Elizabethan Literature than the fact that Elizabethan 
Literature presents a remarkably typical example of 
artistic evolution. Art, of any kind, in nations, in 
schools, even in individuals, progresses by a rhyth- 
mical law of its own. At certain epochs the arts of 
expression are lifelessly conventional. Born to these 
conventions, often feeble and impotent, the nation, 
the school, or the individual destined to be great, will 
begin, like those who preceded, by simple imitation, 
differing from the older conventions only in a certain 
added vigor. By and by, the force which we have 
called creative imagination will develop, with a strange, 
mysterious strength of its own, seemingly almost in- 
spired. Throbbing with this imaginative impulse, the 
nation, the school, or the individual artist will begin 
no longer to imitate, but instead, to innovate, with an 
enthusiasm for the moment as unconscious of limits 
to come as it is disdainful of the old, conventional 
limits which it has transcended. After a while, the 
limits to come will slowly define themselves. No cre- 
ative or imaginative impulse can stray too far. The 
power of words, of lines and colors, of melody and 
harmony, is never infinite. If slavish fidelity to con- 
ventions be lifeless, utter disregard of conventions 
tends to the still more fatal end of chaotic, inarticulate 
confusion. One may break fetter after fetter ; but one's 
feet must still be planted on the earth. One may move 
with all the freedom which the laws of nature allow ; 

26 



402 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

but if one try to soar into air or ether, one is more lost 
even than if one count one's footsteps. So to nations, 
to schools, to individuals alike a growing sense of 
limitation must come. There are things which may 
be achieved ; there are vastly more things and greater 
which remain fatally beyond human power. Experi- 
ence, then, begins to check the wilder impulses of 
creative innovation. Imagination is controlled by a 
growing sense of fact. Finally, this sense of fact, 
this consciousness of environment, grows stronger 
and stronger, until at length all innovating impulse 
is repressed and strangled. Again art lapses into a 
convention not to be disturbed until, perhaps after 
generations, fresh creative impulse shall burst its 
bonds again. 

As elsewhere in nature, so in art, creative impulse 
is a strange, unruly thing, tending constantly to vari- 
ation from the older types, but not necessarily to 
improvement. While the general principles just stated 
are constantly true everywhere, their result is often 
abortive, often, too, eccentric or decadent. At rare 
moments, however, creative impulse surges for a while 
in a direction which carries art irresistibly onward to 
greater and better expressions than men have known 
before. Such impulses as this the centuries find mar- 
vellous. When a great creative impulse has come, 
when the shackles of old convention are broken, when 
the sense of the new limits is developed at once so far 
as to tell instinctively what may be accomplished, and 
not so overwhelmingly as to crush imagination with 



WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 403 

the fatal knowledge of all which is beyond human 
power, then, for a little while, any art is great. The 
moment of ultimate greatness comes when a true cre- 
ative impulse is firmly controlled, but not yet checked, 
by a rational sense of fact. 

These general phenomena are nowhere more con- 
cretely shown than in the growth, development, and 
decay of English Literature during the period which 
we call Elizabethan. Really beginning before the reign 
of Elizabeth, this literary evolution really survived her, 
lasting indeed until the unhappy times of Charles I. 
The central figure of the period during which it took 
place, however, was undoubtedly the great queen, who, 
above any other English sovereign, was once the central 
fact of national life. The literature, then, which we 
may assume to have begun with Wyatt and to have 
ended with Shirley, may safely enough be named Eliza- 
bethan. In this literature the earlier work — such as 
that of Wyatt, of Surrey, of Roger Ascham, of Foxe, of 
Payntcr — was chiefly notable for its eager breaking 
away from old conventions. In substance and in form 
alike its chief motive was to present to English readers 
other and better things than English readers had 
known before. Its method was to imitate the thought 
or the manner of greater or more polished peoples 
or times. Then came a fresh group of writers, — 
Sidney, Lyly, Spenser, Hooker, and the earlier drama- 
tists. All alike, these bold, spirited linguistic inno- 
vators were busy chiefly in proving, with constantly 
freshening impulse, what the newly found English 



404 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

language might do. Then came Marlowe and Shaks- 
pere, and the great Elizabethan drama, — the one 
thing which at that moment the language and the race 
might best accomplish. Then, very swiftly, came the 
decline, when such men as Bacon and Drayton, and 
Davies, and Chapman, and lesser ones, — actually con- 
temporary with the greatest, but tending rather toward 
limitation than toward innovation, — began to use the 
tamed language for purposes more and more special. 
The old impulse was a thing of the past. 

Such generalizations must seem nebulous. A glance 
at a half-forgotten, but still great work of the period, 
may perhaps define them. During the reign of 
Queen Elizabeth no Englishman lived a more com- 
plete life than Sir Walter Ralegh. Country gentle- 
man, student, soldier, sailor, adventurer, courtier, 
favorite and spoilsman, colonizer, fighter, landlord, 
agriculturist, poet, patron of letters, state prisoner, 
explorer, conqueror, politician, statesman, conspirator, 
chemist, scholar, historian, self-seeker, and ultimately 
a martyr to patriotism, he acquired through the latter 
half of Elizabeth's reign the most comprehensive ex- 
perience ever known to an Englishman. Almost with 
the accession of King James his prosperity came to 
an end. He was imprisoned in the Tower, where for 
above ten years he busied himself with writing his 
great History of the World. To this task he brought 
a rare equipment; for not only did he nobly conceive 
history as the visible record of God's dealing with 
mankind, but he had actually experienced more wide 



WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE 405 

variety of such matters as make history than has any 
other Englishman before or since. With above ten 
years of enforced leisure and concentration, with the 
best scholarship of the time to help him collect ma- 
terial, with a very beautiful stately English style of 
his own, he set about his task. In 1614, as much 
of his work as he ever finished was published. The 
History of the World has so long been obsolete that 
except for its name it is almost forgotten. It is tra- 
ditionally supposed to be queer and fantastic, with 
occasional fine bits of rhetoric. Really, it is among 
the most nobly planned books in the world. History, 
as we have seen, Ralegh conceived to be the visible 
record of God's dealing with men. Its value, then, 
lay chiefly in the fact that to whoever should study 
it seriously and reverently, it taught truths not else- 
where accessible concerning tbe nature and the will 
of God. In the language of his time this meant what 
to-day would be meant by a philosophic historian, 
who should find in his subject not merely stirring- 
narrative or plain record of fact, but the visible teach- 
ings of human experience, which, properly understood, 
should govern future conduct. Not only was Ralegh's 
effort a grandly philosophic one, too, but, as we have 
seen, he brought to its accomplishment an almost 
unique equipment. Besides all this, the man had 
a wonderfully cool, clear, rational head ; his mind 
was among the most prudently and judiciously criti- 
cal in all historical literature. Yet, as we have seen, 
his great History has proved of so little value that 



406 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

people nowadays mostly suppose it to be merely 
quaint. 

The reason for this failure clearly defines just what 
the chief limit of Elizabethan Literature was bound to 
be. Human nature has always open to it a wealth of 
experience which may indefinitely develop individuals ; 
and in the time of Elizabeth the possible range of 
individual experience was probably wider than at any 
other period of history. Whoever would write, like 
Ralegh, however, in a profoundly philosophic spirit, 
needs more experience to work with than can ever 
come to any individual. No individual can master the 
material world, even of his own day ; still less can he 
extend his experience beyond the limits of his own life. 
To deal with history, then, on such a scale as Ralegh 
planned, a man must have recourse to endless rec- 
ords which, to avail him, must have been subjected 
to generations of patient scientific criticism ; and in 
Ralegh's time — in Elizabethan England — there were 
no records which he could safely trust. In history, 
in science, in all things alike, the gathering of valid 
material was still to make. All that was ready for 
anything like final expression, then, was on the one 
hand the actual experience of individuals, and on the 
other a plain assertion of some method by which, in 
generations to come, serious study might safely be 
guided. 

In the ripeness of Elizabethan Literature, both of 
these things were finally expressed. Whatever its 
error of detail, the philosophical writing of Bacon has 



WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 407 

done more than any other work of modern times to 
guide in the road which they have travelled the 
thought and the scholarship of the future. More 
notably still, the Elizabethan Drama — whatever its 
artistic peculiarities, or faults, or vagaries — expressed 
with a power and a range never surpassed the infi- 
nitely varied possibility and intensity of individual 
experience. Of these two final achievements the 
drama, if not the more lasting in its effects, was for 
the moment the more complete. Nothing less than 
the lapse of centuries could have demonstrated the 
value of Bacon's philosophy. By the very nature of 
things, on the other hand, the power of a great dra- 
matic literature must be evident to the public which 
first welcomes it. With an approach to truth, then, 
we may say that Elizabethan Literature reduces itself 
finally to the Elizabethan Drama. 

In the work of Shakspere we have studied this drama 
somewhat minutely. Incidentally, too, we glanced 
at the state in which Shakspere found the stage, and 
also at the work of his greatest predecessor and 
early contemporary, — Marlowe. Before Shakspere 
had really begun to show what power was in him, 
Marlowe was dead. Since Marlowe's time, we have 
considered the drama only as it appears in Shakspere. 
More clearly to define his position, Ave may now to 
advantage glance at another dramatist who seems, like 
Marlowe, greater than most of his contemporaries. 

This is John Webster. While Mr. Fleay * shows 

1 Chronicle of the English Drama, II. 268. 



408 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

reason to believe that Webster collaborated with 
Drayton and Middleton and others as early as 1602, 
there seems no doubt that his first independent work 
was the White Devil, — the play, published in 1612, 
which he expressly hopes shall be read in the light of 
Chapman's work, and Jonson's, and Beaumont and 
Fletcher's, and Shakspere's, and Dekker's, and Hey- 
wood's. 1 Just as the work of Marlowe typifies what 
the stage was like when Shakspere's writing began, 
then, the Wliite Devil, — a fair type of Webster's power, 
— coming after Shakspere's work was done, may be 
taken as an example of what the stage was like when 
Shakspere's writing ceased. 

The story of the White Devil is virtually histori- 
cal ; what is more, it was almost contemporary. The 
events therein detailed occurred, about 1585, in that 
Italy which to Elizabethans was much what the Second 
Empire in France was to the Americans of thirty years 
ago — at once their model of civilization, the chief 
source of their culture, and at the same time the sink 
wherein they learned, along with much polite accom- 
plishment, to what depths of depravity human nature 
may fall. The story, in short, bore to Webster's audi- 
ence such relation as might be borne to a modern 
audience by a play which should deal with the career 
of Louis Philippe's Due de Choiseul-Praslin, or with 
that of Louis Napoleon's Countess Castiglione. Web- 
ster, to be sure, took his artist's privilege, and altered 
certain characters for dramatic effect : Camillo, the 

1 See p. 20. 



WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 409 

injured husband, for example, he made a wittol, and 
Isabella, the murdered wife, a highly respectable per- 
son, — which was far from the actual case. On the 
whole, however, he preserved enough fact to claim 
the protection of historical authority. 

As he tells the story, Vittoria Corombona, the 
daughter of a poor Venetian family, is married to 
Camillo, a Roman numskull. Her brother, Flamineo, 
an utterly corrupt soldier of fortune, induces her not 
unwillingly to become the mistress of the Duke of 
Brachiano. This infatuated voluptuary finally deter- 
mines to marry her ; whereupon he has his faithful 
wife, Isabella, poisoned, and meanwhile Flamineo 
manages to make Camillo break his neck. Francisco 
de Medicis, brother of the murdered Isabella, and 
the Cardinal Monticelso suspect foul play, and have 
Vittoria arrested on a charge of murdering her hus- 
band, Camillo. Although the crime cannot be proved, 
sufficient evidence is adduced to send Vittoria to a 
Roman Bridewell. Francisco, meanwhile, has pri- 
vately convinced himself that the real murderer of 
Isabella was Brachiano. In pursuance of revenge, 
then, he takes advantage of the confusion attending 
the election of Monticelso to the papacy, 1 and enables 
Brachiano to steal Vittoria from prison, and to carry 
her, with all her family, to Padua. For this impious 



1 Historically the man whom Wehster calls Monticelso was named 
Montalto, and was made pope hy the name of Sixtus V. Wehster 
makes him take the name of Paul IV. — historically that of a Caraffa. 
This licentious treatment of historic fact is typically Elizabethan. 



410 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

escapade, the fugitives are excommunicated. Fran- 
cisco, still bent on vengeance, follows them in disguise, 
accompanied, among other ruffians, by a certain Count 
Lodovico, who had hopelessly loved the murdered 
Duchess. At a tournament, they managed to poison 
Brachiano's helmet. As he lies dying in agony, 
Lodovico, disguised as a priest, pours into his ears, 
under color of extreme unction, all the curses his 
revengeful brain can devise. Then, while Flamineo 
and Vittoria are quarrelling over what Brachiano has 
left, Lodovico breaks in and kills them — only to be 
killed in turn by Francisco, who would cover his 
tracks. 

The first thing which impresses one in the treat- 
ment of this morbidly horrible story is that, within 
the now established traditions of dramatic form, it is 
studiously realistic. The characters throughout are 
considered as living human beings. The atmosphere 
is so veracious that the play can teach us, almost 
historically, what Sixteenth Century Italy was like. 
This Italy — the country which produced Machiavelli 
— was remarkable for such bewildering complexity 
as always pervades an over-ripe period of society. Of 
this complexity, Webster, with his realistic purpose, 
was so profoundly aware that throughout the play, 
despite all his power of imagination, you feel him 
constantly hampered by a sense of how much he 
had to tell. Great as he was, in short, his subject 
and his vehicle combined almost to master him. 
Every scene, every character, every speech, every 



WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE 411 

phrase, seems deliberately studied ; every line shows 
painful thought; yet for all these pains the play 
remains in total effect rather a tremendous sketch 
than a finished work of art. At first sight, with all 
its complexity of detail, it is puzzling. As you study 
it, you begin to feel its power more and more, until, 
compared with any other power except Shakspere's 
own, it seems almost supreme. Constantly, however, 
you feel that at an earlier period in the drama such 
power might have exerted itself not with painful 
effort, but with spontaneous ease. As matters stand, 
though the construction of scenes and the develop- 
ment of character prove Webster a great dramatist, 
and though phrase after phrase prove him a great 
poet, you feel him paralyzed by a crushing sense of 
his limitations. A wonderful stroke of character 
stands by itself, then comes a startling situation, then 
an aphorism, then a simile, then some admirable 
interjected anecdote; and so on. Nothing is finally 
fused, however ; you feel none of that glowing heat of 
spontaneous imagination which, unchecked by ade- 
quate sense of fact, kept still half-inarticulate the 
aspiring poetry of Marlowe. If one would know what 
the force of creative imagination is like which awakens 
a great school of art, one cannot do better than turn 
to Marlowe ; if one would realize the sense of limita- 
tion in which a great school of art finally declines, 
one cannot do better than turn to Webster. 

Between them stands Shakspere, actually con- 
temporary with both, and throughout his best period, 



412 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

fusing the chief merits of each. Between them, too, 
in artistic evolution, if not always in actual dates, 
comes the great group of ripe dramatists with whom, 
during the most vigorous period of his work as well 
as during its laborious decline, Shakspere competed 
for public favor. We can glance at them only very 
hastily ; but a hasty glance is worth our while. Ben 
Jonson was the greatest master of eccentric " hu- 
mour" — a trait always dear to the English — who 
ever wrote for the English stage ; probably, too, he 
was the most consummate master of mere stage- 
business. Marston, though coarse, was an admirable 
writer of sensational tragedy. Dekker was unique 
for a joyous, off-hand spontaneity of feeling and of 
phrase. Middleton, but for a fatal coldness of per- 
sonal temper, might almost have rivalled Shakspere 
in the handling of character, tragic and comic alike. 
Hey wood, untroubled by such traditions of courtly 
grandeur as made Shakspere, to the end, habitually 
head his dramatis persona? by the figure of a sover- 
eign, was thorough master of romantic sentiment. 
Chapman, if inarticulate, was a constantly impres- 
sive and weighty moralizer. Tourneur was almost 
modern in his impious recklessness. Beaumont and 
Fletcher, though palpably decadent, were superb 
masters of fascinatingly sentimental, always melliflu- 
ous, constantly interesting romance. Nowadays, of 
course, any one can see that neither these nor any of 
their fellows can compare, for range or power, with 
Shakspere. None of them, nor indeed any Eliza- 



WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 413 

bethan but Shaksperc, was contemporary at once 
with Marlowe and with Webster. One and all, 
however, have merits which, by any contemporary 
standards, might well have been confused with 
his. Generally spontaneous, their work has con- 
tinual flashes of insight ; it is often very beauti- 
fully phrased ; and it is rarely overburdened with 
anything which should fatigue or repel a popular 
audience. In the full flush of their power, these 
men had popular merits, as well as merits which 
have proved lasting. From the outset, too, their 
merits were patent. 

In several ways, however, these later men differed 
both from the earlier group which preceded Shakspere, 
and less palpably from Shakspere himself. As we 
saw in the beginning, the first Elizabethan play- 
wrights were closely connected with the actual stage, 
at a time when the stage was socially disreputable. 
They were men of fine poetic gifts and of tolerable 
education ; but they were the Bohemians of a society 
which admitted no distinction between reputable life 
and such professional crime as is lastingly pictured 
in the tavern scenes of Henry IV. The later play- 
wrights, on the other hand, were men of higher 
rank and of far more reputable habit, Beaumont, 
for example, was the son of a judge ; Fletcher was 
the son of a bishop ; Webster's father was a Lon- 
don citizen of the better sort ; and so on. In their 
own private life the traditional Mermaid Tavern, 
which foreshadowed the clubs and the coffee-houses 



414 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

of the Eighteenth Century, took the place of such 
squalid surroundings as saw the end of Marlowe 
and of Greene. Many of these men, too, were 
merely poets or dramatic authors ; they were not 
actors. The stage, in short, was growing into such 
better repute as was bound to come with the in- 
creasingly definite organization of society. A true 
Bohemia was coming into existence. 

The work of these more reputable men, at the same 
time, was less reputable than that of their predeces- 
sors. As the stage grew established, it grew more 
and more licentious. The work of Marlowe needs 
little expurgation ; that of Beaumont and Fletcher, 
for all its grace and beauty, is full of abominations. 
As will often be the case with any school of art, the 
beginnings of the Elizabethan drama had a simple, 
spontaneous purity which vanished when the develop- 
ment of the school made over-refinement of effort, 
take the place of such broadly general motives as 
underlay the work of Greene and Peele and Marlowe. 

Another distinction has been admirably defined by 
Mr. Fie ay : 1 — 

"I may perhaps at this point note how greatly the 
playwrights who were also actors excelled the gentle- 
men authors . . . We have first on the actor-poet list 
Shakspere, more than enough to counterpoise all the 
rest; then Jonson, the second greatest name in our annals; 
then Heywood, Field, Rowley, Armin, Monday. On the 
other side are great names also: Beaumont, Fletcher, Web- 

1 Chronicle History of the London Stage, p. 167. 



WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 415 

ster, Massinger, Shirley, Chapman, and many others, all 
great as poets, but none (except Massinger perhaps) equal 
to even the lesser men in the other list in that undefinable 
quality which separates the acting play from the drama for 
closet reading; the quality which makes Goldsmith and 
Sheridan successful, but the want of which condemns 
Henry Taylor, Browning, and Shelley to remain the de- 
light, not of the crowd, but of the solitary student. My 
opinion in this matter is no doubt open to much qualifica- 
tion, but there is in connexion with it one fact beyond 
dispute, viz., all actor-poets of any great note began their 
theatrical careers before the accession of James." 

These brief notes must suffice to define the histori- 
cal position of Shakspere as the central figure, and the 
most broadly typical, in the evolution of perhaps the 
most broadly typical school of art in modern litera- 
ture. Quite apart from its lasting literary value, 
apart, too, from its unique personal quality, the work 
of Shakspere has new interest to modern students as 
a complete individual example of how fine art emerges 
from an archaic convention, fuses imagination with 
growing sense of fact, and declines into a more ma- 
ture convention where the sense of fact represses and 
finally stifles the force of creative imagination. 

To repeat in detail the summaries of his work al- 
ready made were tedious. It is enough merely to 
glance at the four periods into which we divided his 
career. The first — from 1587 to 1593 or thereabouts 
— we called experimental. He contented himself 
with widely versatile imitation, revealing two personal 



416 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

qualities : a habit of mind by which, to a degree 
unique in English Literature, words and concepts 
were identical ; and later, a power of enlivening the 
conventional figures of his original sources by no 
end of little touches derived from observation of 
life. Throughout this first period, however, his work 
never so differed from that of his contemporaries as 
to be free from the palpable archaism amid which 
a great school of art begins. 

During the second period of his career — from 1593 
to 1600 — the force of his imagination, first revealing 
itself in the artistic completeness of the Midsummer 
Night's Dream and almost simultaneously in the vivid 
characterization of Romeo and Juliet, pervaded and 
altered whatever he touched. His command of lan- 
guage almost constantly strengthened, until — as 
throughout his career — one felt half insensibly that 
while his native habit of mind, fusing phrases and 
concepts, never altered, he tended constantly to con- 
sider thoughts more and words less. Meanwhile his 
power of enlivening character by the results of obser- 
vation so persisted and strengthened that at last — 
as in the case of Falstaff — his characters began to 
have almost independent existence. At the same 
time, with all this power of creating character and 
of uttering ultimate phrases, he displayed more and 
more palpably a sluggishness, if not an actual weak- 
ness, of invention. He repeated, to a degree unap- 
proached by any other writer of his time, whatever 
device had proved theatrically effective, — confusion 



WILT J AM SHAKSPERE 417 

of identity, for example, and later self-deception. 
Apart from these traits, this second, purely artistic 
period revealed little. He created a small army of 
living individuals, he displayed a constant artistic 
impulse, 'but he revealed no profound personal sense 
of fact. During this period, then, his own peculiar 
power of imagination and of artistic impulse was at 
work almost unchecked. The most marked peculiar- 
ity of his power, however, — that it Avas confined to 
such matters of detail as character, phrase, or atmos- 
phere, — meant that his natural sense of fact was 
strong. The growing vitality of his personages in- 
dicated meanwhile a superb fusion of imagination 
with this sense of fact. 

During the third period of his artistic career — from 
1600 to 1608 — we found again this superb fusion of 
his own peculiar creative power and his own strong- 
sense of fact. During this period, however, we found 
something far more significant than the merely artis- 
tic impulse which had preceded. Up to this time his 
plays had expressed nothing deeper than the touch of 
irony which underlies Much Ado About Nothing. Now, 
in place of the old versatility first of experiment and 
then of concentration, we found a constant, crescent 
expression of such emotion as should come only from 
profound spiritual experience. He began to use his 
thoroughly mastered vehicle for the dramatic expres- 
sion of such motives as we had seen to underly his 
wonderfully finished Sonnets. In these motives we 
observed first a profound and increasing sense of 

27 



418 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

irony, of fate, of the helplessness of human beings in 
the midst of their crushing environment. Then came, 
with endless variations, a profound sense of the evil 
which must always spring from the mysterious fact of 
sex. Finally, perhaps as a result of these two causes, 
came a state of mind so over-wrought that, had it not 
been balanced by his supreme artistic sanity, it might 
almost have lapsed into madness. At the height of 
this period, when he produced his four great tragedies, 
his imagination was working with its fiercest power, 
and his sense of fact meanwhile controlled it with 
ultimate firmness. 

One by one, the profound traits of this period began 
to disappear. With Macbeth we saw the end of the 
morbid excitement of mind ; with Antony and Cleo- 
patra we bade farewell to the evil of woman ; with 
Coriolanus, where at length eccentricity or " humour " 
began to replace inevitable character, came the last 
complete expression of despairing irony. In other 
words, the power of his imagination, perhaps ex- 
hausted by the very intensity of its exercise, began 
to weaken under the pressure of a crushing sense 
of fact. 

In Timon and Pericles we found a moment of ar- 
tistic transition. The spontaneous power was gone. 
All that remained of the old Shakspere was the mar- 
vellous command of language, palpable even in his 
earliest work, and crescent with him to the end. 

Finally, in the fourth and last period of his career 
— which extended at most from 1609 to 1612 — we 



WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 419 

found a colossal scries of technical experiments, where, 
with all his unequalled mastery of art, and with a 
serenely ideal philosophy, he was struggling, i n vain, 
to enliven with something like the old spontaneous 
imaginative power, the crushing sense of fact which 
was fatally closing in not only on him, but on the 
school of literature to which he belongs. The more 
one studies Shakspere's work as a whole, the more 
complete becomes its typical historic significance. 

This typical quality, however, is not the trait which 
has made it survive. Just now the study of literary 
evolution happens to be the fashion, or at least to ap- 
peal to the temper of the day. The temper in ques- 
tion is new and probably transient. Shakspere was a 
supreme figure long before it existed ; he will remain 
such long after it has taken its place among the curiosi- 
ties of the past. What makes him perennial is that, 
above any other modern poet, he was a man of genius, 
— one who in perception and in expression alike, in 
thought and in phrase, instiuctively so did his work 
that it remains significant long after the conditions 
which actually produced it have vanished. In our 
admiration for this genius, for this constantly fresh 
significance, we are apt to forget all else, and in our 
forgetfulness to be lost in stammering wonder. 

Nowadays the form which this wonder most aptly 
takes is, perhaps, first amazement, then incredulity, 
then frank doubt as to whether all this wonderful 
poetry could conceivably have been produced by a 
middle-class Englishman, the record of whose life is 



420 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

so calmly commonplace. Such doubt can no more 
be dispelled by any process of argument than can 
religious scepticism. Like religious scepticism, too, 
such doubt has small effect on anything but the 
temper of people who are not disposed to share it. 
To the doubters, such views as have been set forth 
in this study may perhaps seem pathetically erro- 
neous. To believers, on the other hand, certain 
obvious coincidences between these views and the 
recorded facts may perhaps seem fortifying if not 
convincing. 

In the first place, of course, we must assume that 
William Shakspere happened to be what many another 
man of humble origin has been before and since, — a 
man of genius. In the second place, as we saw perhaps 
most clearly when we studied the Sonnets, the man's 
temperament, for all his genius, was strongly indivi- 
dual, — different from that of any contemporary, or 
indeed of anybody else at all. In the third place, as 
our whole course of study has shown us, his artistic 
development from beginning to end was perfectly nor- 
mal. In the fourth place, his two most marked traits 
as an artist are both unmistakable and persistent : 
from beginning to end he displayed a habit of mind 
which made less distinction than is generally con- 
ceivable between w T ords and the concepts for which 
words stand ; and his imaginative power, in many 
aspects unlimited, always exerted itself chiefly in 
matters of detail, — most of all in the creation of 
uniquely individual characters. In mere invention, 



WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 421 

in what is vulgarly called originality and what really 
means instinctive straying from fact, he was weaker 
than hundreds of lesser men. 

Given these facts, there is a marked correspondence 
between the conjectural chronology of his work and 
the recorded facts of his life. What little is known 
of him up to the time of Greene's allusion in 1592 
indicates that, in country and in city alike, he had 
during the first twenty-eight years of his life rather 
unusual opportunities for varied experience ; and a 
distinct motive for making the most of his chances 
to better his condition. The experience of these ex- 
perimental years began to bear fruit with the Mid- 
summer Night's Dream. At the time to which we 
assigned the Merchant of Venice and Henry IV., the 
process of fruition had gone far enough to establish 
him as for the moment the ablest dramatic writer 
in England. Here, on the one hand, the records show 
him beginning to re-establish his family at Stratford ; 
and a little later Meres's allusion proves, what any 
one might have inferred, that he had actually won 
professional recognition. With the exceptional pub- 
lication of 1600 came the climax of his career. Later 
we found him no longer merely an artist, but a poet 
deeply stirred by such emotions as should normally 
have come to him had the conjectural story of the 
Sonnets been substantially true. Meanwhile he pro- 
duced the great tragedies ; and all the time, with the 
growing prosperity which such work should have in- 
volved, he kept strengthening the position of his family 



422 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

in their country home. About 1609 came the break 
in his creative power, at a moment when professional 
competition was stronger than it had ever been be- 
fore. After that, the actual records show him no 
longer connected with professional life, but retiring 
more and more into the comfortable ease of a country 
gentleman. And so came the end. 

At first glance, of course, the two records still look 
incompatible. They have in common, however, a trait 
which to many minds may well seem the most pro- 
foundly characteristic of all. Throughout Shakspere's 
career his imagination, for all its power, was concen- 
trated on matters of detail. He created a greater 
number and variety of living characters than any other 
writer in modern literature. He made innumerable 
final phrases. Ever and again, by patient and re- 
peated experiment with familiar motives, he com- 
bined old materials in constantly fresh and lastingly 
beautiful artistic effects. To a degree hardly paral- 
leled, however, he was free from vagaries. Through- 
out his career, one may almost say, what he really 
and constantly did was this : instead of soaring into 
the clouds or the ether, he looked calmly about him, 
took account of what material was at hand, and with 
the utmost possible economy of invention decided what 
might be done with it and disposed of it accordingly. 
Among imaginative artists he is unique for practical 
prudence. 

In the conduct of his life, as the records reveal it, 
precisely the same trait is manifest. The problem 



WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 423 

before hiin, as a man, in 1587, was one which most 
men find insoluble. The son of a ruined country 
tradesman, and saddled with a wife and three chil- 
dren, his business at twenty -three was so to conduct 
his life that he might end it not as a laborer but as 
a gentleman. After five-and-twenty years of steady 
work this end had been accomplished. 

Grossly material it is the fashion to call such aspi- 
ration and such success as this. No doubt there is 
much to warrant such a contemptuous slur on self- 
made men. Personally such people are often unlovely, 
scarred and seamed by the struggles of a contest for 
which their critics are more than often too feeble- 
Even though the self-made man of petty commerce 
seem a prosaic fact, however, the real trait which 
has raised him above his fellows is a trait which his 
critics as a rule so lack that they honestly fail to 
appreciate its existence. What the successful trades- 
man has really done is to perform a feat of construc- 
tive imagination every whit as marvellous, if not so 
beautiful, as the work of any artist or poet. Facing 
the actual world as he sees it, all against him, he 
has made in his mind, perhaps unwittingly, an image 
of some state of things not yet in existence : a popu- 
lar demand for some new commodity, it may be, or a 
sudden shift of values. Acting on this perception, 
to which less imaginative people are blind, he has 
outstripped others in the race for fortune. To put 
the matter perhaps extravagantly, what vulgar criti- 
cism would call grossly material success really in- 



424 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 

volves a feat of creative imagination in certain aspects 
more wonderful than any other known to human ex- 
perience ; for while the creative artist is bound only 
to imitate the divine imagination which controls the 
universe, the man who achieves practical success is 
bound so to share that divine imagination as for 
a while even to share, too, the prophetic foresight 
of divinity. 

Such a material achievement as Shakspere's, then, 
involves an imaginative feat quite as wonderful, if not 
so rare, as the imaginative feat involved in the crea- 
tion of Shakspere's works. Granting this, as all who 
honestly appreciate it surely must, we may see in the 
peculiar concreteness of Shakspere's artistic imagina- 
tion a trait which instead of contradicting the record of 
his life goes as far as any one fact can go to confirm 
it. Applied to the stage by which he was forced to 
make his way, his peculiar imaginative power pro- 
duced the marvellous characters and phrases which 
make his work almost a part and parcel of the divine 
creation. Applied to the material facts of life, this 
same concrete imagination so controlled and grouped 
and composed and mastered them that a life-time 
of honest work resulted in just such achievement 
as throughout English history has been the general 
ideal of honest, simple-hearted Englishmen. 

Life and work alike, then, if we will but look at 
them together, tell the same story. Both begin 
simply, carelessly, trivially. Both pass through a 
period of growing impulse and aspiration. To both 



WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 425 

alike — if for a moment we may pass from records 
and take for granted that, whatever the actual story 
of the Sonnets, the Sonnets are spiritually true — 
come fierce buffets. Both alike, after years of 
struggle and of conquest, fade into peace. 



AUTHORITIES, ETC. 



The standard text is that of the Cambridge Shakespeare. This 
is virtually reproduced in the single-volume Globe Shakespeare, 
to which all the references in this book are made. The type of the 
Globe edition, however, is too small for general reading. 

For such purposes as are considered in this book — purposes 
not concerned with textual criticism — any well-printed edition 
will serve. 

The photographic reproductions of the quartos are convenient. 

Furness's Variorum Shakespeare is beyond criticism, as far as 
it has gone. 

Rolfe's notes are convenient and compendious ; so are those of 
the Henry Irving Shakespeare. 

Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon is the standard dictionary. 

Mr. John Bartlett's forthcoming Concordance will doubtless 
supplant all others. 

The commentaries directly used in composing this book are 
referred to in the notes. 

To present anything like an adequate bibliography of Shaks- 
pere would require a large volume. Whoever wishes to study 
the subject in detail will find an admirable guide in the printed 
catalogues of the Barton Collection in the Boston Public Library. 
These may conveniently be supplemented by the exhaustive bib- 
liographies published from time to time in the Shakspere Jahrbuch. 
Taken together, these authorities will direct attention to almost all 
books on Shakspere and his times which are accessible to the gen- 
eral public. 



INDEX. 



In this Index no attempt has been made to analyze the regular discussions 
of the separate works of Shakspere, to which any one desiring knowledge 
of them would naturally turn. All mentions of these works, and of charac- 
ters therein, which do not occur in the regular discussions, have been 
noted. 

The works of Shakspere are entered alphabetically under the head of 
Shakspere ; and the characters are entered alphabetically under the heads 
of the plays in which they occur. 

When works of other authors are mentioned, they are similarly entered 
alphabetically under the heads of their writers. 

The term seq. is used to indicate that the matter in question is mentioned 
on more than two consecutive pases. 



Activity of intellect, abnormal in 
Shakspere, 257, 262, 268, 269, 283, 
293, 301, 310, 324, 331, 334, 339, 
340, 342, 418. Cf. Insanity. 

Actors in Shakspere's time, 33, 35, 
40 seq., 113, 367, 382, 413. 

jEntid, Surrey's translation of, 26, 
53. 

Alliteration in Elizabethan litera- 
ture, 55, 68. Cj. Euphuism; Ver- 
bal ingenuity. 

Aphorism in Elizabethan literature, 
28, 55, 201, 203, 399. See Phi- 
losophy. 

Archaism evident in Shakspere's 
plays, 77, 122, 129, 134, 136, 137, 
142, 150, 165, 167, 295, 308, 410. 

Anosto, 190. 

Aristocracy set forth by Shakspere, 
329 seq. 



Armada, 75. 

Armin, 414. 

Art, Shakspere's mastery of. 106. 
112, 187, 236, 253 seq., 299, 308, 
338, 396, 397. 

Artistic, impulse, chiefly as revealed 
by Shakspere, 104, 109, 115, 190, 
215, 219, 303, 324, 334, 338, 341, 
342, 349, 416, 417. 

Artistic individuality, 48. 

Artistic purpose, growth of Shaks- 
pere's, 100, 103, 191, 220, 256. 

Artistic significance of Hamlet, 256 

Ascham, Roger, 26, 27, 403. 

Atmosphere in plavs, 86, 90, 94, 107 
seq., 113, 126, 146, 181, 200, 202, 
207, 235, 322, 350, 363, 369, 383, 
386 See Description. 

Audiences in Shakspere's time, 33, 
154, 274, 295, 309. 



430 



INDEX. 



Bacon, Francis, 98, 218, 343, 393, 
394, 404, 406. 

Bandello, 116, 190. 

Beaumarchais, 180. 

Beaumont, Francis, 20. 413, 414. 

Beaumont and Fletcher, 72, 159, 343, 
344, 393, 394, 408, 412. 

Knight of the Burning Pestle, 

159, 393. 
Maid's Tragedy, 303, 393. 

Belleforest, 251, 254. 

Bible, 27, 393, 394. 

Blank verse, 26, 35, 76, 122, 186, 320, 
357, 380, 391. 

Bohemians in Shakspere's time, 34, 
41, 172, 413, 414. See Actors. 

Bolingbroke, 173, 290. 

Box and Cox, 179. 

Brooke, Arthur, 116, 118, 119, 120, 
126, 128, 201. 

Brooke, Stopford, Primer of Eng- 
lish Literature, 23. 

Burbage, 46. 

Calvinism, 269, 273, 305, 311. 

Camden, 343. 

Campion, 343. 

Centurie of Pray se, 21. 

Chapman, George, 20, 56, 217 seq., 
223, 271, 343, 393, 404, 408, 412, 
415. 

Bussy d'Ambois, 241, 378. 

Character, development of, in Shaks- 
pere's plays, 90, 93, 94, 96, 107, 
109, 111, 124, 129, 130, 135, 141, 
148, 149, 160, 177, 186, 193, 201, 
212, 213, 252, 281, 296 seq., 305, 
306, 308, 323, 324, 328, 331, 336, 
337, 341, 349, 350, 363, 369, 383, 
386, 388, 416, 422. 

Chaucer, 24, 105, 271. 

Chettle, Henry, 10. 

Chronicle-history, 45, 71, 74 seq., 
81, 82, 88, 93, 129, 130, 133, 134, 
136, 143, 144, 164 seq., 175. 180, 
189, 194, 213, 236, 240, 242, 293, 
295, 303, 313, 326, 327, 336, 337, 
378. 



Chronologv of Shakspere's works, 
4 seq., 97, 101, 175, 210 seq., 335, 
349, 355, 388, 392, 421. 

Cinthio's Hecatommithi, 263, 278. 

Clarendon, 344. 

Clowns in Shakspere's plays, 85, 87, 
94, 107, 109, 111, 148, 203, 383. 

Coke on Littleton, 400. 

Coleridge, 396. 

Collaboration in plav-writing, 71 
seq., 82, 88, 129, 158," 159, 161, 303, 
388. 

Comedy, 45, 75, 88, 143, 144, 153, 
162, "164, 190, 213, 216, 236, 270, 
305, 336, 354. 

Comic dialect, 178, 187. 

Competitors, Shakspere's profes- 
sional, 394. See Environment. 

Concreteness of Shakspere's imagi- 
nation, 424. Ste Character; Econ- 
omy of invention; Words and 
ideas. 

Confusion of identity, as a dramatic 
motive, 86, 90, 95, 107, 108, 147, 
148, 179, 207, 248, 265, 337, 361, 
383, 416, 417. 

Constable, 98. 

Contemporaries of Shakspere. See 
Environment. 

Contention betwixt the two famous 
Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, 
First Part of the, 70, 79, 80. 

Corneille, 317. 

Coryat, 393. 

Creative imagination, chiefly as 
revealed by Shakspere, 103, 115, 
123, 127, 128, 131, 142, 150, 156, 
166, 167, 171, 174, 175, 180, 194, 
201, 202, 213, 219, 257, 324, 334, 
337, 338, 341, 343, 349, 350. 364, 
375, 392, 416, 423. See Artistic 
impulse. 

Criticism, a general scheme of, 90. 
See Atmosphere; Character; Plot. 

Daniel, Samuel, 98, 217, 222, 393. 

Delia, Sonnets to, 98, 222. 
Davidson, 343. 



INDEX. 



431 



Davies, Sir John, 217, 404. 

Death set forth by Shakspere, 126, 
267, 301, 306, 311, 312. 

Decadence of power, symptoms of, 
in Shakspere, 321, 351, 357, 361, 
364, 377, 3S1, 392, 418. See Ex- 
haustion - r Relaxation ; Weakness. 

Decameron, 93, 356. 

Dekker, Thomas, 20, 218, 219, 343, 
344, 393, 394, 408, 412. 
Honest Whore, 378. 

Democracy set forth by Shakspere, 
81, 243, 328, 329, 333, 366, 373, 
383. 

Denouement studied in Shakspere's 
later works, 358, 361, 368, 377, 
378. 

Depression set forth by Shakspere, 
334. See Spiritual suffering. 

Description, 90. See Atmosphere. 

Despair expressed in Macbeth, 305, 
313. 

Disguised heroine, 38, 95, 147 seq., 
202, 207. 265, 362. 

Donne, John, 393, 394. 

Double, or consecutive, plays, 138, 
241, 378, 379. See Chronicle His- 
tory; Tragedies of Eevenge. 

Doubtful plays, perhaps not genuine, 
50, 66, 70,"l28, 157, 345, 387, 389, 
395. 

Doubts as to genuineness of Shaks- 
pere's works, 419. 

Dowden, Edward, Primer of Shaks- 
pere, 7. 

Drama, the Elizabethan, 2, 3, 113, 
130, 407. See Environment. 

Drayton, Michael, 98, 114, 181, 217 
seq., 222, 393, 404, 408. 
Idea's Mirror, 217, 222. 

Drvden's All for Love, 314, 315, 
316, 319. 

Economy of invention, Shakspere's, 
87, 95, 147, 192, 194, 202, 207, 209, 
216, 217, 220, 248, 2G3 seq., 279, 
287, 337, 353, 356, 361, 366, 379, 
416, 422. See Recapitulation. 



Edward III., 75. 395. 

Effort palpable in Shakspere's later 
plays, 361, 303, 364, 374, :J7 
387, 388, 392. 

Elizabeth, 17, 343. 

Elizabethan Hamlet, 253. 

Elizabethan narrative, 

Elizabethan voyages, 365, 368. 

Environment, Shakspere's literary, 
40 seq., 45, 82, 97, 217, 343, 393, 
412. 

Euphuism, 28, 29. 38, 44, 55, 85, 122, 
134, 135. 

Evolution of art, 2, 401 seq. (see 
Imagination; Fact); of English 
literature, 218, 219, 415. 

Exhaustion of Shakspere's power, 
341, 344, 351, 353. See Deca- 
dence; Relaxation; Weakness. 

Experiment, linguistic, in early Eliz- 
abethan literature, 26 ; palpable 
in Shakspere's work, 87, 88, 92, 
96, 100, 101,107, 129, 157, SSQseq., 
341, 345, 351,,353, 378, 419. 



Fact, sense of: a factor in literary 
evolution, 402, 411; palpable in 
Shakspere, 235, 391, 417 seq. See 
Concreteness; Imagination. 

Fairfax's Tasso, 218. 

Fairies, 114. 

Famous Victories of Henry V., 163, 
165, 169. 

Fancy, 375. See Imagination. 

Fashion, literary, about 1587, 26, 
52. 

Fate, sense of, in Shakspere's plays, 
243, 250, 259, 269, 270, 272 seq. 
277, 300, 301, 305, 321, 330, 33J, 
386, 418. 

Field, 414. 

Fitton, Mrs. Mary, 224 seq. 

Fleay, F. G-, Biographical Chronicle 
of the English Drama, and Chron- 
icle History of English Dramatic 
Literature, 23; Life and Work uj 
Shakespeare, 7. 



432 



INDEX. 



Fletcher, John, 20, 318, 387, 413, 414. 

Florio, 343, 365. 

Folio of 1623, 4, 17. 

Folk-lore, 105, 114. 

Fools, 203, 366. 

Ford, John, 394. 

Forman, Dr. Simon, 302, 308, 355, 

377. 
Foxe, John, 27, 138, 168, 387, 400, 

403. 
Fuller, 344. 
Furnivall's Leopold Shaktpere, 1. 

Gammer Gurton's Needle, 32. 
Generic personages, 177. See Char- 
acter. 
Genius, 2, 396, 419, 420. 
Ghosts in Shakspere's plays, 241, 

243, 252, 307. See Supernatural. 
Globe Theatre, 17, 19, 302, 309, 377, 

387. 
Golding's Ovid, 27, 51, 105. 
Gorboduc, 32. 
Gosson, Stephen, 41 seq. 
Gower's Confessio Amantis, 345. 
Greene, Robert, 9, 10, 20, 23, 34, 40, 

43, 71, 74, 98, 159, 167, 172, 217, 

219, 381, 385, 414, 421. 

Green's Groatsworth of Wit, 9, 

37, 73. 
Pnndosto, 377. 
Groups of Shakspere's plays, 50. 97 

seq., 103 seq., 210 seq., 238, 335 

seq., 355. 

Hakluyt's Voyages, 28, 98, 218. 
. Hall, Edward, 71, 76, 387. 
Hall, Joseph, 344, 394. 
Hall, Dr. John (m. Susanna Shaks- 

pere), 18. 
Halliwell-Phillips's Outlines of the 

Life of Shakespeare, 7. 
Harvey, Gabriel, 29, 98. 
Hathaway, Anne (m. Wm. Shaks- 

pere), 8. 
Heroic ideals of character in Shaks- 

pere, 184 seq., 197 seq., 203, 272, 

274. See Ctiaracter. 



Heywood, Thomas, 20, 218, 219, 343, 

344, 408, 412, 414. 

Fair Maid of the West, 378. 
Historic fact, carelessness of, in Eliz- 
abethan plays, 409 n. 
Historical fiction, 167, 180, 194, 314, 

320, 327. 
Historical forces, Shakspere's sense 

of, 78, 173, 216, 243, 321, 337. See 

Fate. 
Historical literature in Shakspere's 

time, 75. See Chronicles; Holin- 

shed; Ralegh. 
Historical position of Shakspere in 

English literature, 2, 415 seq. 
Holinshed, 28, 71, 76, 128, 133, 163, 

186, 188, 201, 288, 293, 302, 327, 

355, 387, 400. 
Hooker, 217, 218, 403. 
Hortatoiy purpose, 181, 182. 
Hudibras, 170. 
Humour in the Elizabethan sense, 

161, 186, 328, 331, 332, 334, 341, 

349, 350. 

Idealism expressed in Shakspere's 
works, 232, 234, 366, 372, 386. 

Idiomatic metrical forms, 226. 

Imagination a factor in literary evo- 
lution, 402, 411 ; palpable in Shak- 
spere, 375, 417, 418, 422, 424. Cf. 
Creative imagination. 

Imitation, the earliest form of art, 
401 ; in Shakspere's early work, 70. 
See Economy of invention. 

Inductions on the Elizabethan stage, 
111, 146, 159, 160, 199, 216, 368. 

Insanity, Elizabethan view of, 155, 
294; set forth by Shakspere, 253, 
260, 283, 294, 295, 307, 382 ; symp- 
toms of, in Shakspere, 258, 283, 307, 
310, 339, 340, 418. See Activity 
of intellect. 

Interludes, 31. 33, 35, 130, 202. 

Ironv set forth by Shakspere, 194, 
216, 243, 245, 246, 250, 262, 263, 
269, 277, 281, 299, 301, 311, 331, 
333, 338 seq., 417, 418. 



INDEX. 



433 



James I.. 17, 343. 
Jesters, 203. 

Jews, Elizabethan view of, 152, 153. 
Jonson, Ben, 14, 20, 100, 218, 219, 
223, 295, 343, 344, 349, 393, 408, 
412, 414. 

Bartholomew Fair, G6, 170. 
Every Man in his Humour, 14, 

183, 184. 
Poetaster, 223, 343. 



Kempe, Will, 225. 
King's Plavers, 17. 
Kyd, Thomas, 71, 88, 219, 251. 
Jeronimo, 66, 241, 295. 



Learning of Shakspere, 185, 396, 

400. 
Leicester, Earl of, his players, 23. 
Licentiousness, of later drama, 414; 

Shakspere's freedom from, 89, 146, 

265, 347. 
Light endings to verses, 320, 326. 
Limitations, of Elizabethan literature, 

406; of Shakspere, 216, 337, 411, 

417, 420. 
Literature, English, in the time of 

Shakspere, 23-30, 392, 403, 406. 

See Environment. 
Lodge, Thomas, 217, 219. 

Rosahjnde, 199, 200, 201. 
Love, sacred and profane, 229; set 

forth bv Shakspere, 57 seq., 126, 

151, 198, 202, 204, 216, 229, 249, 

325, 338. See Women. 
Lovers set forth by Shakspere, 249, 

264. 
Lyly. John, 37, 40, 44, 83, 84, 88, 98, 
*219, 366, 403. 

Cupid and Campaspe, 24, 39. 
Euphues, 28, 29, 30, 37, 40, 200, 
201. 
Lyric verse in Elizabethan litera- 
- ture, 36, 39 seq., 44, 122. See 

Operatic traits of Elizabethan 

plays. 



Machiavelli, 410. 
Madness. S( e Insanity. 
Manners, Elizabethan, 276. 
Manningham, Julm, diary of, 46, 

205. 
Marlowe, Christopher, 56-62, 98-100 ; 
mentioned, 11. 20, 23, 34, 40, 4:!, 
44, 6!) seq., T'i. bs, 129, L36, 167, 
172. 212, 217 seq., 239, 407, 411, 
413, 414. 

Edward II. , 75, 99, 100, 133. 

136. 
Dr. Faustus, 99. 
Hero and Leander, 56 seq., 99 

199, 218. 
Jew of Malta, 69, 70, 99. 
Tamburlaine, 35, 36, 39, 70, 98, 
99. 
Marston, John, 219, 343, 344, 412. 
Antonio and Mellida, 241. 
Antonio's Revenge, 378. 
Martin Marprelate, 98. 
Mary Stuart, 75. 
Masques, 178, 202. 
Massinger, Philip, 387, 394, 415. 
Men of letters, 40, 222. 
Meres, Francis, important allusion to 

Shakspere, 14, 137, 211, 421. 
Mermaid Tavern, 413. 
Middleton, Thomas, 180, 218, 219, 
302, 343, 344, 394, 408, 412. 
Changeling, 155, 294. 
Chaste Maid in Cheapside, 170, 

180. 
Witch, 304. 
Milton, John, 105, 344. 
Miracle Plays, 31, 33, 75, 165. 
Mirror for Magistrates, 393. 
Monday, 414. 

Montemayor, Diana of, 92. 
Moralities, 31, 33, 35, 130, 202. 
Mvstery, sense of, set forth by Shaks- 
pere, 127, 256, 259, 260, 262, 263, 
269, 301, 305. 



Nash, Thomas, 98, 217, 219. 
New Place, 13, 43. 



28 



434 



INDEX. 



Nicholson, 74. 

Normality of Shakspere's develop- 
ment, 6, 349, 420. 

North, Sir Thomas, his translation of 
Plutarch's Lives, 27, 105, 240, 
242, 313, 314, 318, 322, 323, 326, 
327, 345, 400. 

Novels, Italian, 93. 

Novelty, craving for, in Shaks- 
pere's time, 26, 27, 29, 30, 38, 39, 
44, 45, 55, 84, 85, 213. See Verbal 
ingenuity. 



Observation, Shakspere's power of, 
94, 101, 102, 212, 213, 416. 

Operatic traits of Elizabethan plays, 
78, 84, 130, 142, 202, 388, 390. 

Originality, developed by Shakspere, 
77, 82, 95, 101. 

Ovid, 53, 89. See Golding. 



Passion, set forth by Shakspere, 231, 

236. 243. 245, 263, 300, 301, 311, 

326, 334, 341. 
Passionate Pilgrim, 16, 221. 
Pathos, Shakspere's sense of, 300. 
Patriotism in Shakspere's time, 75. 

See Henry V. 
Pavnter's Palace of Pleasure, 27, 

51, 116, 118 seq., 126, 128, 246, 

345, 400, 403. 
Pecorone of Sir Giovanni Fiorentino, 

144. 
Peele, George, 20, 23, 34, 40, 43, 71, 

159, 167, 217, 219, 414. 
David and Bethsabe, 35. 
Edward 1., 75. 
Pembroke, Earl of, 224 seq. 
Periods of Shakspere's career, 415. 

See Groups of Shakspere's plays. 
Petrarch, 25, 226. 
Philosophy, chiefly as set forth by 

Shakspere, 232, 269, 274, 291, 327, 

333, 372, 374, 393, 396, 399, 419. 

See Aphorism. 



Phrase-making, 55, 56, 64. See 

Verbal ingenuity. 
Pickwick Papers, 170. 
Plausibility, development of, in 

Shakspere's plays, 96, 110, 126, 

132, 145. 156, 164, 175, 189, 191, 

349, 384. 
Plautus, 89, 90, 91. 
Amphitryon, 88. 
Menechmi, 12, 88, 205. 
Playwrights in Shakspere's time. 

See Environment. 
Play-writing, 49, 72, 125, 189. See 

Collaboration. 
Plots of plays, 90, 93, 109, 123, 138, 

145, 159, 178, 281, 296 seq., 349, 

358 seq., 361, 368, 386. 
Plutarch, 241. See North. 
Pseudo-classic plays, and popular, 

32, 33, 35. 
Publication unfashionable in 1587, 

26. 
Puritanism burlesqued, 170- 



Quincy, Richard, correspondence 
about Shakspere, 13, 14, 163. 

Quincy, Thomas, married Judith 
Shakspere, 20. 



Race-conflict symbolized in Cali- 
ban, 373. 

Ralegh, Sir Walter, 404-406; men- 
tioned, 98, 217. 

Discovery of Guiana, 217, 365. 
History of the World, 404 seq. 
Ralph Roister Doister, 32. 

Rant in Elizabethan plays, 35, 39, 
68, 74, 78, 79, 139, 187, 274, 295. 

Recapitulation in Shakspere's works, 
43,172,209, 264, 265, 325, 340, 362, 
366, 376, 381, 422. See Economy 
of invention. 

Reconciliation, Shakspere's alleged 
preaching of, 352, 353, 372. 

Relaxation of Shakspere's power, 
324, 334, 340, 342, 343, 384. See 



INDEX. 



435 



Decadence ; Exhaustion ; Weak- 
ness. 
Renaissance in England, 53, 83, 89. 
Repartee, 8G. See Wit; Verbal 

ingenuity. 
Rhyme in Shakspere's plays, 83, 

122, 247. - See Verse tests. 
Riche, Barnaby : Apolonius and Silla, 

205. 
Romance, 348, 352, 354, 368, 385, 

388. 
Romantic feeling, 208, 216, 236, 337, 

362. See Romance; Women. 
Rowley, 414. 
Ryland, F., Chronological Outlines oj 

English Literature, 23. 

Sanity of artistic temperament, 236, 
258, 301. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 167. 

Self-confidence of poets, 223. 

Self-deception, a frequent dramatic 
motive of Shakspere. 179, 193 seq., 
208, 248, 265, 281, 337, 362, 382, 
417. Cf. Confusion of identity. 

Self-made men, 423. 

Self-revelation, in works of art, 229 ; 
in Shakspere's works, 225, 226, 264, 
286, 301, 310, 326, 331 seq. 

Sensitiveness of Shakspere's tem- 
perament, 225, 230 seq. 

Shakspere, Hamnet, 8, 12, 141. 

Shakspere, John, 7, 12, 18, 43. 

Shakspere, Judith (m. T. Quincv), 
8,20. 

Shakspere, Susanna (m. John Hall), 
8, 18. 

Shakspere, William, life, 7-22; 
about 1593, 97-102; from 1593 to 
1600, 210-220; from 1600 to 1608, 
335-344; about 1612, 392-394; in 
general, 1-6, 395-425. 

All's Well That Ends Well, 
246-250; mentioned, 262 seq., 
300, 325, 335, 339, 352. 
Bertram, 265. 
Diana, 265. 
Parolles, 265. 



1 Shakspere (continued). 

Antony and Cleopatra, 313-326; 
mentioned, 16, 327, 329, 331, 
334, 335, 339, 340, 343, 384, 
418. 
Cleopatra, 113, 340. 
As You Like It, 199-205 ; men- 
tioned, 16, 208, 209, 212, 216, 

352, 366 seq., 374, 383. 
Jaques, 214. 
Phoebe, 248. 

Rosalind, 207, 214, 248, 325. 
Touchstone, 208, 214. 

Comedy of Errors, 88-92; men- 
tioned, 12, 15, 94, 105, 107, 
111, 205, 207, 208, 211, 352, 

353, 367. 
^Emilia, 195. 353, 383. 
Dromios, 203. 

Coriolanus, 326-334; mentioned, 
50, 67, 81, 336, 339, 341, 342, 
353, 367, 418. 
Cymbeline, 355-364; mentioned, 
19. 50, 347, 352, 366 seq., 370, 
371,374, 376, 377, 381, 392. 
Imogen, 207, 370, 382. 
Posthumus, 382. 
Hamlet, 250-262; mentioned, 16, 
69, 240. 263, 264, 268. 269, 
275, 284, 286, 300, 302, 307, 
310, 312, 324, 325, 331, 335, 
339, 340. 

Hamlet, 267, 283, 295, 301, 

.310, 312, 372. 
Horatio, 312. 
Ophelia, 311. 
Polonius, 240. 
Queen, 311. 
Henry TV., 162-175 ; men- 
tioned, 13, 15, 16. 49, 176. 179. 
181, 187, 190, 191, 194, 201, 
211 seq., 216, 221, 314, 383, 
413, 421. 

Bardolph, 44. 
Doll Tearsheet, 277. 
Falstaff, 43, 44, 208.213,214, 
248, 256. 265, 283. 286, 
294, 340, 366, 383, 416. 



436 



INDEX. 



Shakspere (continued). 

Gadsb.il!, 44, 187. 

Hotspur, 76, 214. 

Pete, 44. 

Pistol, 248, 294. 

Poins, 187. 

Prince Hal, 187, 214 (see 

Henry V.). 
Quickly, Mrs., 44. 
Shallow, 383. 
Slender, 208. 
Henry V., 180-190; mentioned, 
4, 16, 77, 163, 175, 176, 198, 
211, 212, 214, 216, 286, 327, 
329. 
Henry V., 78. 
Henry VI., 70-82; mentioned, 
4, 9, 16, 34, 49, 83, 84, 87, 
99, 128, 130, 131, 212, 213, 
243, 328, 329, 351, 389. 
Cade, Jack, 328, 329. 
Henry V11L, 387-392; men- 
tioned, 4, 19, 50, 355, 394. 
Katharine, Queen, 382. 
King John, 137-143; mentioned, 
144, 148, 162, 163, 21 1, 214, 367. 
Arthur. Prince, 382. 
Faulconbridge, Bastard, 
256. 
Julius Ccesar, 240-246; men- 
tioned, 50, 81, 250, 252, 262 
seq., 286, 307, 327 seq., 333, 335, 
339, 378. 
Brutus, 273. 
Cassius, 273. 
King Lear, 287-301; mentioned, 
16, 69, 284, 302, 306, 310, 324, 
325, 335, 356. 
Cordelia, 362. 
Goneril, 280, 311. 
Kents, 312. 

Lear, 195, 310, 312, 372. 
Regan, 280, 311. 
Love's Labour's Lost, 82-87; 
mentioned, 13, 15, 16, 90, 93, 
107, 111, 116, 122, 178, 193, 
195, 202, 211, 247, 276, 325, 
351, 383. 



Shakspere (continued). 
Biron, 192, 193. 
Dull, 192, 203. 
Rosaline, 192, 193, 325. 
Love's Labour 's Won, 15, 246, 

248, 335. 
Lucrece, the Rape of, 51-65; 

mentioned, 11, 217. 
Macbeth, 302-313; mentioned, 19, 
69, 324, 325, 331, 335, 339, 
340, 355, 356, 399, 418. 
Banquo, 113. 
Macbeth, 113, 372. 
Lady Macbeth, 362. 
Measure for Measure, 263-270; 
mentioned, 248, 285 seq., 300, 
325, 336, 352. 

Overdone, Mrs. 277. 
Merchant of Venice, 144-157 ; 
mentioned, 13, 15, 16, 94, 143, 
159, 161, 163, 166, 180, 194, 
199, 201 seq., 211, 214, 216, 
248, 286, 331, 350, 352, 368, 421. 
Antonio, 208. 
Bassanio, 208. 
Jessica, 207. 
Nerissa, 207. 
Portia, 207, 214, 266, 325, 

337. 
Shylock, 214, 266, 294. 
Merry Wives of Windsor, 175- 
180 ; mentioned, 16, 187, 194, 
195, 212, 214, 249, 383. 
Midsummer Night's Dream, 105- 
116 ; mentioned, 15, 16, 50, 
117, 129, 132, 143, 146, 159, 
178, 180, 190, 194, 199, 202, 
211, 214 seq., 238, 286, 334, 341, 
343, 367 seq., 374, 383, 416, 
421. 

Pyramus and Thisbe, 116, 
276. 
Much Ado About Nothing, 190- 
198; mentioned, 16, 38, 199, 
203, 212 seq., 216, 245, 246, 
331, 338, 352, 366, 417. 
Beatrice, 86, 203, 207, 208, 
214, 325. 



INDEX. 



437 



Shakspere {continued). 

Benedick, 86, 203, 207, 208, 

214, 265. 
Claudio, 279, 301, 372. 
Dogberry, 203, 214. 
Hero, 279, 382, 383. 
Don John, 279. 
Verges, 203. 
Othe llo, 278-287; mentioned, 17, 
69, 272, 288, 300, 302, 303, 
310, 312, 324, 325, 335, 380. 
Cassio, 276. 
Desdemona, 272, 275, 276, 

300, 311, 382. 
Emilia, 382. 
Iago, 195, 310, 362. 
Othello, 195, 275, 283, 310 
seq., 362, 382, 384. 
Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 345- 
354; mentioned, 16, 17, 50, 
361,362, 367, 368, 376, 393, 418. 
Marina, 367. 
Thaisa, 195, 353, 383. 
Richard II., 133-137: men- 
tioned, 13, 15, 17, 34, 75, 142 
seq.;m, 181, 189, 211, 214, 291. 
John of Gaunt, 166. 
Norfolk, 290. 
Richard III., 128-132; men- 
tioned, 13, 15, 34, 46, 81, 99, 
133, 134, 141, 143, 144, 148, 
163, 189, 211, 214, 243, 307, 
367, 387. 

York, Duke of, 382. 
Richard III., 76, 214. 
Romeo and Juliet, 116-128; men- 
tioned, 13, 15, 16, 67, 129, 132, 
140, 142, 143, 148, 161, 190, 
192, 201, 204, 207, 211, 213, 
214, 216, 237, 286, 328, 336, 
337, 416. 
Juliet, 195, 214, 311, 356, 

362. 

Mercutio, 166, 214, 265. 

Romeo, 214, 311. 

Sonnets (Shakspere's), 221-237; 

mentioned, 15 seq., 26, 46, 49, 

50, 220, 239, 250, 264, 286, 300, 



Shakspere (continued). 

310, 325, 326, 338, 339, 393, 
417, 421, 425, cf. 122. 
Taming of the Shrew, 107-162; 
mentioned, 111, It;:;. 
214. 216, 346. 
Tempest, 365-377; mentioned, 
4, 19, 347, 34S, 352, 
381, 385, 386,392, 393, 399. 
Ariel, 382. 
Caliban, 385. 
Prospero, 385. 
Timon of Athens, 345-354 ; men- 
tioned, 50, 361, 393, 418. 
Titus Andronicus, 66-70; men- 
tioned, 11, 15, 16, 50, 71, SI 
seq., 87, 140, 211, 213, 238, 
295, 345, 351, 389. 
Aaron, 195. 
Troilus and Cressida, 271-277; 
mentioned, 16, 278, 285, 286, 
300, 325, 335, 393. 
Cressida, 284, 285, 311, 
Twelfth Night, 205-209; men- 
tioned, 16, 50, 94, 212, 216, 
238, 325, 340, 352, 353, 363, 
367. 
Sir Andrew Aguecheek, 383. 
Sir Toby Belch, 366. 
Malvolio, 195, 265. 
Olivia, 248. 
Viola, 248, 325, 337. 
Two Gentlemen of Verona, 92- 
96; mentioned, 4, 15, 50, 88, 
101, 105, 107, 111, 112, 147, 
161, 162, 202, 211, 213, 238, 
248, 352. 
Julia, 207. 
Launce, 148, 203. 
Proteus, 107, 108. 
Speed, 148. 
Venus and Adonis, 51-65; men- 
tioned, 11, 23, 97. 
Winter's Tale, 377-387; men- 
tioned, 19, 348, 352, 355, 392, 
393. 

Hermione, 195, 353. 
Shirley, 415. 



438 



INDEX. 



Sidney, Sir Philip, 26, 35,40,98, 217, 
222, 226, 403. 

Arcadia, 26, 98, 200, 288. 
Astrophel and Stella, 98, 222. 
Defence of Poesy, otherwise 
Apology for Poetry, 32, 41, 
217, 352. 

Simplicity of great art, 299, 363. 

Sonnets, varieties of, 226. 

Sources, relation of Shakspere's 
works to, 53, seq., 76, 89, 93, 106 
seq., 117 seq., 138, 145, 186, 188, 
242, 254, 314 seq., 318 seq., 323, 
367. 

Southampton, Earl of 11, 51. 

Southwell, 217. 

Speed, John, 394. 

Spenser, Edmund, 29, 98, 114, 217, 
218, 222, 226, 288, 403. 
Amoretti, 217, 222, 223. 
Faerie Queene, 98, 190, 200, 217, 

226. 
Skepher 'd' s Calendar, 29. 

Spiritual suffering set forth by 
Shakspere, 236, 260, 269, 301, 311, 
338, 417. 

Spontaneity, development of, in 
Shakspere, 143, 172, 174, 264, 337, 
338, 363, 376, 384, 386, 393. See 
Creative imagination. 

Stationers' Register, 5. 

Stowe, 28, 71, 76, 343. 

Sturley, Abraham, 13, 163. 

Style, development of Shakspere's, 
58 seq., 67, 80, 83, 116, 122, 125, 
126, 134, 140, 149, 156, 185, 186, 
213, 227, 245, 247. 253, 266 seq., 
274, 285, 289 seq.. 293, 304 seq., 308, 
320, 323, 326, 331 seq., 337, 339, 
347, 350, 356, 370, 371, 374, 379, 
381, 386, 418, 422; early Eliza- 
bethan, 55. See Euphuism; Nov- 
elty; Verbal ingenuity. 

Supernatural matters in Macbeth, 306 
seq. See Ghosts. 

Surrey. Earl of, 24, 25, 53, 83, 226, 403. 

Symonds, J. A., Shakspere's Pre- 



Taverns in Shakspere's time, 43, 
172. See Bohemia. 

Tayming of a Shrowe, 157, 158. 

Temperament, the artistic, 3, 108, 126, 
157, 174, 215, 226 seq., 236, 239, 
244, 257, 258, 261, 327, 338. See 
Artistic impulse; Creative imagi- 
nation. 

Text, corruption of, 188, 210. 

Theatre, the English, in Shakspere's 
time, 31-44, 123, 160, 183, 309, 413 
seq. See Actors; Audiences; In- 
ductions; Operatic; Kant. 

Theatre, social status of, 40 seq. See 
Bohemians. 

Thought, Shakspere's increasing in- 
tensity of, 268, 342, 355. See 
Activity of intellect. 

Titus and Vespasian, 66. 

Tottel's Miscellany, 25. 

Tourneur, Cyril, 344, 394, 412. 

Tragedy, 45^ 127, 136, 143, 144, 190, 
213, 216, 236, 242, 278, 296, 304, 
338, 342, 347, 352, 354. 

Tragedy of blood, 68 seq., 75,88, 123, 
127, 252, 295. 

Tragedies of revenge, 241, 252. 

Transition between artistic moods, 
242, 348, 351, 353,418. 

Translation the actual task of Eliza- 
bethan dramatists, 76, 82, 89, 93, 
117, 133, 138, 191, 209, 272, 293. 

Translations from foreign languages 
in Shakspere's time, 27. 

Troublesome Eaigne of John King 
of England, 137 se<7-,165. 

True Tragedie of Richard Duke of 
Yorlce, etc., 70, 74. 

Two Noble Kinsmen, 395. 

Typical character of Shakspere as 
an artist, 2, 415, 419. 

Unities, the pseudo-classic, 91, 367, 

368. 
Usury, Elizabethan view of, 152, 153. 

Variations, Shakspere's fondness 
for, when a theme possessed his 



INDEX. 



439 



imagination, 85, 87, 108, 116, 276, 
277. See Cressida ; Desdemona. 
Verbal ingenuity, extravagance of, 
m Elizabethan style, 29, 30, 40, 
44, 56, 64, 84, 122, 196, 213, 366, 

Versatility, -Shakspere's, of experi- 
ment, 101, 102, 157, 212, 213; of 
concentration, 132, 136, 144. 163, 
190, 198, 215, 220, 249, 272,' 275, 
277, 338. 

Verse-tests, 5, 83, 247, 326, 332, 333, 
336, 347, 349, 355, 356, 376, 377. 
Cf Light Endings ; Rhyme; Weak 
Endings ; Blank verse. 

Vice, chief character in Moralities, 
31, 177, 202. 



Ward, A. W., History of English 

Dramatic Literature, 23. 
Weak endings to verses, 320, 326, 

340. 
Weakness, symptoms of growing, in 

Shakspere's later work, 332, 345, 



349 seq. See Decadence; Exhaus- 
tion; Relaxation. 
Webster, John, 407-111; mentioned, 
2'), 344, 413, 414. 

Duchess of Malfi, 294. 
White Devi!,, 408-410; men- 
tioned, 19, 388, 394. 
Wit, development of, m Much Ado 

About Nothing, 195. 
Women, as set forth by Shakspere, 
151, 197, 203, 216, 250, 260, 262 
seq., 270, 272, 273, 277, 279 seq., 
300, 310 seip, 325, 326, 331, 334, 
338 seq., 362, 418. 
Words and ideas, general relations 
of, 56; in Shakspere's mind almost 
identical, 63, 65, 101. 102, 196, 212, 
213, 246, 381, 416, 420, 424. 
World, as known in Shakspere's 

time, 365, 368. 
Wvatt, Sir Thomas, 24, 25, 40, 53, 
83, 226, 403. 
Forget Not Yet, 24, 39. 
Sonnets, 25, 53. 



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